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STUDENTS' EDITIONS OF 

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SONGS, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 

Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by William J. Rolfe, 

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For sale by Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
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SELECT POEMS 



OF 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 



Edited with Notes 

BY 

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M. 

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



J3 



^ OCT 20 1184 

^ ' r r r \«/ / ">>' * 



BOSTON 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 

1885 






Copyright, 1884, 
By James R. Osgood and Company. 



All rights reserved. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



The text of the poems in this volume is that of the last English 
(1884) edition. For the readings of the editions of 1830, 1832, and 
1842, I have had to depend upon quotations in the reviews and in the 
commentaries of Shepherd, Tainsh, Wace, Bayne, and others. These 
early editions are not in the Cambridge or Boston libraries, and I have 
not been able to find them anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. An 
inquiry for them inserted in the Literacy World proved as unavailing 
as the letters I had sent to friends in various parts of the country and 
in Canada. I did get track of the 1832 volume in several quarters ; 
but all these " trails," when followed up, led to a single copy belonging 
to Ralph Waldo Emerson, which has recently disappeared from his 
library and cannot be traced. He lent it, fifty years ago, to many of 
his friends — among them, Mr. John S. Dwight, who reviewed it in the 
Christian Examiner 'm. 1833, and Mrs. Hawthorne (then Miss Peabody), 
who made a drawing to illustrate The Lady of Shalott. 

For the changes in the more recent editions, I have depended mainly 
on the American reprints, all of which, from 1849 down, I have been 
able to consult. For the readings of the first edition of the Welling- 
ton Ode, I used a copy given to the Harvard College Library by Mr. 
Longfellow. 

To explain the omission of certain pieces which are specially appro- 
priate for school and home reading, I may add that many favorite 
poems suited to a younger class of readers than those for whom the 
present selection is designed, have been reserved for another volume. 

Cambridge, August 9, 1884. 



Note. — Since the above was in type, Miss Elizabeth Peabody has sent me 
the following note, which she permits me to print here : — 

" If you see Mr. Tennyson in Europe, I wish you would tell him that in cor- 
recting the first inspirations of his Muse he made a mistake ; that nobody ought 
to do that! The critical understanding is a finite growth in time, but the 



VI PREFACE. 

poetic imagination is a divine influx of the eternal whole that knows better how 
to use nature's symbols. 

" In The Lady of Shalott there was, in the first edition, a passage describing 
the lady ' looking down to Camelot,' that was so wonderful in its effect on the 
imagination that my sister, Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, drew the figure and 
face, and the river ruffled by ' the east wind chilly,' in an outline h. la Flax- 
man, which completely reproduced the effect of the beautiful lines ; but when 
the second edition came out the lines were changed, so that the design was with- 
out its archetype. 1 tried to make my sister send the sketch to Mr. Tennyson, 
as the best lesson to give him, for I thought all his alterations — but especially 
that one — mistakes. I remember I wrote him a note to go with the sketch, in 
which I spoke to him of the Dresden Madonna, which was one of those in- 
spirations that so mastered the artist that he always believed the Madonna 
stood before him with the child — and so never dared to touch it again, lest his 
own shortcoming might put out the light of the original revelation that he 
embodied {? Nature with the divine humanity in its arms — looking forward 
through the passion and the cross to the triumph of the resurrection and 
ascension, which should make all the agony bearable). 

" Was not this inspiration something above the natural outcome of the char- 
acter Raphael developed on earth ? It seems to me to reveal the great law of 
the supremacy of the Ideal, which the youthful genius of Tennyson so often 
realized. Wordsworth, as well as Tennyson, seems to me to have profaned in 
the same way some of the most wonderful expressions of the absolute Ideal 
vouchsafed to him — for instance, in one line of his Ode to Duty, in which the 
scientific theologian presumes to correct the inspired prophet. 

" My sister was so modest I never could persuade her to send the sketch, and 
so my note did not go, and now both are lost. When I went to England in 1871, 
on news of her death, I could not find them among her papers, or would have 
sent them then." 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Recollections of the Arabian Nights it 

The Poet i6 

The Lady of Shalott 19 

The Miller's Daughter 25 

Q^NONE ^^ 

The Lotos-Eaters 42 

The Palace of Art 48 

A Dream of Fair Women 60 

• The Epic : Morte d' Arthur 71 

The Talking Oak 8n 

Ulysses 94 

Locksley Hall 97 

The Two Voices 108 

St. Agnes' Eve 126 

Sir Galahad 128 

The Brook 132 

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington . 140 

NOTES 149 

INDEX 197 





Courage,' he said, and pointed toward the land, 
This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.' 

The Lotos-Eaters. 



SELECT POEMS 



OF 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON. 




RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 



When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free 

In the silken sail of infancy, 
The tide of time flow'd back with me, 

The forward- flowing tide of time j 
And many a sheeny summer morn, 
Adown the Tigris I was borne, 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, 
High-walled gardens green and old. 
True Mussulman was I and sworn, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 



12 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS: 

Anight my shallop, rustling thro' 
The low and bloomed foliage, drove 
The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove 
The citron-shadows in the blue ; 
By garden porches on the brim, 
The cosdy doors flung open wide. 
Gold glittering thro' lamp-light dim, 
And broider'd sofas on each side. 

In sooth it was a goodly time, 20 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Often, where clear-stemm'd platans guard 

The outlet, did I turn away 

The boat-head down a broad canal 

From the main river sluiced, where all 

The sloping of the moon-lit sward 

Was damask-work, and deep inlay 

Of braided blooms unmown, which crept 

Adown to where the water slept. 30 

A goodly place, a goodly time, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

A motion from the river won 

Ridged the smooth level, bearing on 

My shallop thro' the star-strown calm. 

Until another night in night 

I enter'd, from the clearer light, 

Imbower'd vaults of pillar'd palm. 

Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb 40 

Heavenward, were stay'd beneath the dome 

Of hollow boughs. A goodly time, 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 13 

Still onward ; and the clear canal 

Is rounded to as clear a lake. 

From the green rivage many a fall 

Of diamond rillets musical, 

Thro' little crystal arches low 

Down from the central fountain's flow 50 

Fallen silver-chiming, seem'd to shake 

The sparkling flints beneath the prow. 

A goodly place, a goodly time. 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Above thro' many a bowery turn 

A walk with vary-color'd shells 

Wander'd engrain'd. On either side 

All round about the fragrant marge 

From fluted vase, and brazen urn 60 

In order, eastern flowers large. 

Some dropping low their crimson bells 

Half-closed, and others studded wide 

With disks and tiars, fed the time 

With odor in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Far off, and where the lemon grove 

In closest coverture upsprung, 

The living airs of middle night 

Died round the bulbul as he sung ; 70 

Not he, but something which possess'd 

The darkness of the world, delight. 

Life, anguish, death, immortal love, 

Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd, 

Apart from place, withholding time, 

But flattering the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 



14 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 

Black the garden-bowers and grots 

Slumber'd ; the solemn palms were ranged 

Above, unwoo'd of summer wind ; 80 

A sudden splendor from behind 

Flush'd all the leaves with rich gold-green, 

And, flowing rapidly between 

Their interspaces, counterchanged 

The level lake with diamond-plots 

Of dark and bright. A lovely time. 

For it was in the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead, 

Distinct with vivid stars inlaid, 90 

Grew darker from that under-flame ; 

So, leaping lightly from the boat. 

With silver anchor left afloat, 

In marvel whence that glory came 

Upon me, as in sleep I sank 

In cool soft turf upon the bank. 

Entranced with that place and time, 

So worthy of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Thence thro' the garden I was drawn — 100 

A realm of pleasance, many a mound, 

And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn 

Full of the city's stilly sound. 

And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round 

The stately cedar, tamarisks, 

Thick rosaries of scented thorn. 

Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks 

Graven with emblems of the time, 

In honor of the golden prime 

Of good Haroun Alraschid. no 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 1 5 

With dazed vision unawares 
From the long alley's latticed shade 
Emerged, I came upon the great 
Pavilion of the Caliphat. 
Right to the carven cedarn doors, 
Flung inward over spangled floors. 
Broad-based flights of marble stairs 
Ran up with golden balustrade, 

After the fashion of the time, 

And humor of the golden prime 120 

Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

The fourscore windows all alight 
As with the quintessence of flame, 
A million tapers flaring bright 
From twisted silvers look'd to shame 
The hollow- vaulted dark, and stream 'd 
Upon the mooned domes aloof 
In inmost Bagdat, till there seem'd 
Hundreds of crescents on the roof 

Of night new-risen, that marvellous time, 130 

To celebrate the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 

Then stole I up, and trancedly 

Gazed on the Persian girl alone, 

Serene with argent-lidded eyes 

Amorous, and lashes like to rays 

Of darkness, and a brow of pearl 

Tressed with redolent ebony. 

In many a dark delicious curl, 

Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone \ 140 

The sweetest lady of the time, 

Well worthy of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid. 



i6 



THE POET. 



Six columns, three on either side, 
Pure silver, underpropt a rich 
Throne of the massive ore, from which 
Down droop 'd in many a floating fold, 
Engarlanded and diaper'd 
With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. 
Thereon, his deep eye laughter- stirr'd 
With merriment of kingly pride, 
Sole star of all that place and time, 
I saw him — in his golden prime. 
The Good Haroun Alraschid ! 




THE POET. 



The poet in a golden clime was bom, 

With golden stars above ; 
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
The love of love. 



THE POET. 17 

He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill, 

He saw thro' his own soul. 
The marvel of the everlasting will, 
An open scroll. 

Before him lay : with echoing feet he threaded 

The secretest walks of fame : 10 

The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed 
And wing'd with flame, 

Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue. 

And of so fierce a flight, 
From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, 
Filling with light 

And vagrant melodies the winds which bore 

Them earthward till they lit ; 
Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower, 

The fruitful wit 20 

Cleaving took root, and springing forth anew 

Where'er they fell, behold, 
Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew 
A flower all gold, 

And bravely furnish'd all abroad to fling 

The winged shafts of truth. 
To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring 
Of Hope and Youth. 

So many minds did gird their orbs with beams, 

Tho' one did fling the fire. 30 

Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams 
Of high desire. 



1 8 THE POET. 

Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world 

Like one great garden show'd, 
And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurl'd, 
Rare sunrise flow'd. 

And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise 

Her beautiful bold brow, 
When rites and forms before his burning eyes 

Melted like snow. 40 

There was no blood upon her maiden robes 

Sunn'd by those orient skies ; 
But round about the circles of the globes 
Of her keen eyes 

And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame 

Wisdom, a name to shake 
All evil dreams of power — a sacred name. 
And when she spake, 

Her words did gather thunder as they ran. 

And as the lightning to the thunder sc 

Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, 
Making earth wonder, 

So was their meaning to her words. No sword 

Of wrath her right arm whirl'd, 
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word 
She shook the world. 



THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 



19 




THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 



Part L 

On either side the river lie 
Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
And thro' the field the road runs by 
To many-tower'd Camelot ; 



20 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 

And up and down the people go, 
Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below, 
The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
Little breezes dusk and shiver 
Thro' the wave that runs forever 
By the island in the river 

Flowing down to Camelot. 
Four gray walls, and four gray towers, 
Overlook a space of flowers, 
And the silent isle imbowers 

The Lady of Shalott. 

By the margin, willow-veil'd, 
Slide the heavy barges trail'd 
By slow horses ; and unhail'd 
The shallop flitteth silken- sail'd 

Skimming down to Camelot : 
But who hath seen her wave her hand ? 
Or at the casement seen her stand ? 
Or is she known in all the land, 

The Lady of Shalott? 

Only reapers, reaping early 
In among the bearded barley. 
Hear a song that echoes cheerly 
From the river winding clearly, 

Down to tower'd Camelot : 
And by the moon the reaper weary. 
Piling sheaves in uplands airy. 
Listening, whispers, ' 'T is the fairy 

Lady of Shalott' 



THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 21 



Part II. 

There she weaves by night and day 

A magic web with colors gay. 

She has heard a whisper say, 

A curse is on her if she stay 40 

To look down to Camelot. 
She knows not what the curse may be, 
And so she weaveth steadily, 
And little other care hath she, 

The Lady of Shalott 

And moving thro' a mirror clear 
That hangs before her all the year, 
Shadows of the world appear. 
There she sees the highway near 

Winding down to Camelot j 50 

There the river eddy whirls, 
And there the surly village-churls, 
And the red cloaks of market girls, 

Pass onward from Shalott. 

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, 
An abbot on an ambling pad. 
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad. 
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad. 

Goes by to tower'd Camelot ; 
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue 60 

The knights come riding two and two : 
She hath no loyal knight and true, 

The Lady of Shalott. 

But in her web she still delights 
To weave the mirror's magic sights, 



THE LADY OF SHALOTT, 

For often thro' the silent nights 
A funeral, with plumes and lights 

And music, went to Camelot : 
Or when the moon was overhead. 
Came two young lovers lately wed ; 70 

' I am half-sick of shadows,' said 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Part III. 

A BOW-SHOT from her bower-eaves, 
He rode between the barley- sheaves ; 
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, 
And flamed upon the brazen greaves 

Of bold Sir Lancelot. • 

A red-cross knight forever kneel'd 
To a lady in his shield, 
That sparkled on the yellow field, 80 

Beside remote Shalott. 

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free, 
Like to some branch of stars we see 
Hung in the golden Galaxy. 
The bridle bells rang merrily 

As he rode down to Camelot ; 
And from his blazon'd baldric slung 
A mighty silver bugle hung, 
And as he rode his armor rung, 

Beside remote Shalott. 90 

All in the blue unclouded weather 
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather. 
The helmet and the helmet-feather 
Burn'd like one burning flame together, 
As he rode down to Camelot ; 



THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 

As often thro' the purple night, 
Below the starry clusters bright, 
Some bearded meteor, trailing light, 
Moves over still Shalott. 

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd ; 
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode j 
From underneath his helmet flow'd 
His coal-black curls as on he rode, 

As he rode down to Camelot. 
From the bank and from the river 
He flash'd into the crystal mirror \ 
*■ Tirra lirra,' by the river 

Sang Sir Lancelot. 

She left the web, she left the loom, 
She made three paces thro' the room, 
She saw the water-lily bloom. 
She saw the helmet and the plume, 

She look'd down to Camelot. 
Out flew the web and floated wide j 
The mirror crack'd from side to side : 
* The curse has come upon me,' cried 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Part IV. 

In the stormy east-wind straining. 
The pale yellow woods were waning, 
The broad stream in his banks complaining, 
Heavily the low sky raining 

Over tower'd Camelot ; 
Down she came and found a boat 
Beneath a willow left afloat, 
And round about the prow she wrote 

The Lady of Shalott. 



24 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 

And down the river's dim expanse — 

Like some bold seer in a trance, 

Seeing all his own mischance — 

With a glassy countenance 130 

Did she look to Camelot. 
And at the closing of the day 
She loosed the chain, and down she lay ; 
The broad stream bore her far away, 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Lying, robed in snowy white 
That loosely flew to left and right — 
The leaves upon her falling light — 
Thro' the noises of the night 

She floated down to Camelot ; 140 

And as the boat-head wound along 
The wiflowy hills and fields among, 
They heard her singing her last song, 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Heard a carol, mournful, holy. 
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, 
Till her blood was frozen slowly. 
And her eyes were darken'd wholly, 

Turn'd to tower'd Camelot ; 
For ere she reach'd upon the tide 150 

The first house by the water-side, 
Singing in her song she died, 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Under tower and balcony. 
By garden-wall and gallery, 
A gleaming shape she floated by. 
Dead-pale between the houses high, 
Silent into Camelot- 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 



25 



Out upon the wharfs they came, 
Knight and burgher, lord and dame, 
And round the prow they read her name, 
The Lady of Shalott, 

Who is this ? and what is here ? 
And in the hghted palace near 
Died the sound of royal cheer ; 
And they cross'd themselves for fear, 

All the knights at Camelot : 
But Lancelot mused a little space ; 
He said, ' She has a lovely face ; 
God in his mercy lend her grace, 

The Lady of Shalott.' 



170 



\u 







THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 



I SEE the wealthy miller yet. 
His double chin, his portly size. 

And who that knew him could forget 
The busy wrinkles round his eyes ? 



26 THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 

The slow wise smile that, round about 
His dusty forehead drily curl'd, 

Seem'd half- within and half- without, 
And full of dealings with the world ? 

In yonder chair I see him sit. 

Three fingers round the old silver cup — 
I see his gray eyes twinkle yet 

At his own jest — gray eyes lit up 
With summer lightnings of a soul 

So full of summer warmth, so glad, 
So healthy, sound, and clear and whole, 

His memory scarce can make me sad. 

Yet fill my glass : give me one kiss : 

My own sweet Alice, we must die. 
There's somewhat in this world amiss 

Shall be unriddled by and by. 
There 's somewhat flows to us in life, 

But more is taken quite away. 
Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife, 

That we may die the selfsame day. 

Have I not found a happy earth ? 

I least should breathe a thought of pain. 
Would God renew me from my birth, 

I 'd almost hve my life again. 
So sweet it seems with thee to walk. 

And once again to woo thee mine — 
It seems in after-dinner talk 

Across the walnuts and the wine — 

To be the long and listless boy 
Late-left an orphan of the squire. 

Where this old mansion mounted high 
Looks down upon the village spire \ 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 27 

For even here, where I and you 

Have Hved and loved alone so long, 
Each morn my sleep was broken thro' 

By some wild skylark's matin song. 40 

And oft I heard the tender dove 

In firry woodlands making moan ; 
But ere I saw your eyes, my love, 

I had no motion of my own. 
For scarce my life with fancy play'd 

Before I dream'd that pleasant dream — 
Still hither thither idly sway'd 

Like those long mosses in the stream. 

Or from the bridge I lean'd to hear 

The mill-dam rushing down with noise, 50 

And see the minnows everywhere 

In crystal eddies glance and poise. 
The tall flag-flowers when they sprung 

Below the range of stepping-stones. 
Or those three chestnuts near, that hung 

In masses thick with milky cones. 

But, Alice, what an hour was that, 

When after roving in the woods 
('T was April then), I came and sat 

Below the chestnuts, when their buds 60 

Were glistening to the breezy blue ; 

And on the slope, an absent fool, 
I cast me down, nor thought of you, 

But angled in the higher pool. 

A love-song I had somewhere read, 

An echo from a measured strain. 
Beat time to nothing in my head 

From some odd corner of the brain. 



28 THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 

It haunted me, the morning long, 
With weary sameness in the rhymes. 

The phantom of a silent song. 

That went and came a thousand times. 

Then leapt a trout. lii lazy mood 

I watch'd the little circles die ; 
They past into the level flood. 

And there a vision caught my eye ; 
The reflex of a beauteous form, 

A glowing arm, a gleaming neck. 
As when a sunbeam wavers warm 

Within the dark and dimpled beck. 

For you remember, you had set. 

That morning, on the casement-edge 
A long green box of mignonette. 

And you were leaning from the ledge ; 
And when I raised my eyes, above 

They met with two so full and bright — 
Such eyes ! I swear to you, my love. 

That these have never lost their light. 

I loved, and love dispell'd the fear 

That I should die an early death ; 
For love possess'd the atmosphere. 

And fill'd the breast with purer breath. 
My mother thought. What ails the boy ? 

For I was alter'd, and began 
To move about the house with joy, 

And with the certain step of man. 

I loved the brimming wave that swam 
Thro' quiet meadows round the mill, 

The sleepy pool above the dam, 
The pool beneath it never still. 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 29 

The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor, 
The dark round of the dripping wheel, 

The very air about the door 

Made misty with the floating meal. 

And oft in ramblings on the wold, 

When April nights began to blow, 
And April's crescent glimmer'd cold, 

I saw the village lights below ; 
I knew your taper far away. 

And full at heart of trembling hope, no 

From off the wold I came, and lay 

Upon the freshly-flower'd slope. 

The deep brook groan'd beneath the mill ; 

And ' by that lamp,' I thought, '■ she sits ! ' 
The white chalk-quarry from the hill 

Gleamed to the flying moon by fits. 
* O that I were beside her now ! 

O will she answer if I call ? 
O would she give me vow for vow. 

Sweet Alice, if I told her all ? ' 120 

Sometimes I saw you sit and spin ; 

And, in the pauses of the wind. 
Sometimes I heard you sing within ; 

Sometimes your shadow cross'd the blind. 
At last you rose and moved the light. 

And the long shadow of the chair 
FHtted across into the night, 

And all the casement darken'd, there. 

But when at last I dared to speak, 

The lanes, you know, were white with may ; 130 
Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek 

Flush'd like the coming of the day : 



so THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 

And so it was — half-sly, half-shy, 

You would, and would not, little one ! 

Although I pleaded tenderly, 
And you and I were all alone. 

And slowly was my mother brought 

To yield consent to my desire : 
She wish'd me happy, but she thought 

I might have look'd a little higher ; 140 

And I was young — too young to wed : 

' Yet must I love her for your sake ; 
Go fetch your Alice here,' she said : 

Her eyelid quiver'd as she spake. 

And down I went to fetch my bride : 

But, Alice, you were ill at ease ; 
This dress and that by turns you tried. 

Too fearful that you should not please. 
I loved you better for your fears, 

I knew you could not look but well ; 150 

And dews, that would have fallen in tears, 

I kiss'd away before they fell. 

I watch'd the little flutterings, 

The doubt my mother would not see ; 
She spoke at large of many things, 

And at the last she spoke of me ; 
And turning look'd upon your face, 

As near this door you sat apart. 
And rose, and, with a silent grace 

Approaching, press'd you heart to heart. 160 

Ah, well — but sing the foolish song 

I gave you, Alice, oh the day 
When, arm in arm, we went along, 

A pensive pair, and you were gay 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 3 1 

With bridal flowers — that I may seem, 

As in the nights of old, to lie 
Beside the mill-wheel in the stream, 

While those full chestnuts whisper by. 

It is the miller's daughter, 

And she is grown so dear, so dear, 170 

That I would be the jewel 

That trembles at her ear ; 
For hid in ringlets day and night, 
I 'd touch her neck so warm and white. 

And I would be the girdle 

About her dainty, dainty waist, 
And her heart would beat against me, 

In sorrow and in rest ; 
And I should know if it beat right, 
I 'd clasp it round so close and tight. 180 

. And I would be the necklace, 

And all day long to fall and rise 
Upon her balmy bosom, 

With her laughter or her sighs ; 
And I would lie so light, so light, 
I scarce should be unclasp'd at night. 

A trifle, sweet ! which true love spells — 

True love interprets — right alone. ■ 
His light upon the letter dwells, 

For all the spirit is his own. 190 

So, if I waste words now, in truth. 

You must blame Love. His early rage 
Had force to make me rhyme in youth. 

And makes me talk too much in age. 

And now those vivid hours are gone. 

Like mine own life to me thou art. 
Where Past and Present, wound in one, 

Do make a garland for the heart : 



32 THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 

So sing that other song I made, 
Half-anger' d with my happy lot, 

The day, when in the chestnut-shade 
I found the blue forget-me-not. 

Love that hath us in the net. 
Can he pass, and we forget ? 
Many suns arise and set. 
Many a chance the years beget. 
Love the gift is Love the debt. 
Even so. 

Love is hurt with jar and fret. 
Love is made a vague regret. 
Eyes with idle tears are wet. 
Idle habit links us yet. 
What is love ? for we forget : 
Ah. no ! no ! 

Look thro' mine eyes with thine. True wife. 

Round my true heart thine arms entwine ; 
My other dearer life in life. 

Look thro' my very soul with thine ! 
Untouch'd with any shade of years. 

May those kind eyes forever dwell ! 
They have not shed a many tears, 

Dear eyes, since first I knew them well. 

Yet tears they shed ; they had their part 

Of sorrow : for when time was ripe. 
The still affection of the heart 

Became an outward breathing type, 
That into stillness past again. 

And left a want unknown before ; 
Although the loss had brought us pain. 

That loss but made us love the more. 



(ENONE. 

With farther lockings on. The kiss, 

The woven arms, seem but to be 
Weak symbols of the settled bliss. 

The comfort, I have found in thee : 
But that God bless thee, dear — who wrought 

Two spirits to one equal mind — 
With blessings beyond hope or thought. 

With blessings which no words can find. 

Arise, and let us wander forth. 

To yon old mill across the wolds ; 
For look, the sunset, south and north, 

Winds all the vale in rosy folds, 
And fires your narrow casement glass, 

Touching the sullen pool below : 
On the chalk-hill the bearded grass 

Is dry and dewless. Let us go. 



IZ 




GENONE. 



There hes a vale in Ida, lovelier 
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, 
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, 
3 



34 (ENONE. 

And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 

The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down 

Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 

The long brook falling thro' the cloven ravine 

In cataract after cataract to the sea. 

Behind the valley topmost Gargarus lo 

Stands up and takes the morning ; but in front 

The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal 

Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, 

The crown of Troas. 

Hither came at noon 
Mournful CEnone, wandering forlorn 
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. 
Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck 
Floated her hair or seem'd to float in rest. 
She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine, 
Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade 20 

Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff. 

* O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, 
Dear mother Ida, liearken ere I die. 
For now the noonday quiet holds the hill ; 
The grasshopper is silent in the grass ; 
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, 
Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. 
The purple flower droops ; the golden bee 
Is lily-cradled : I alone awake. 

My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, 30 

My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, 
And I am all aweary of my life. 

* O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, 

Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 

Hear me, O earth, hear me, O hills, O caves 

That house the cold crown'd snake ! O mountain brooks, 



(EN ONE. 35 

I am the daughter of a River-God, 

Hear me, for I will speak, and build up all 

My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls 

Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, 40 

A cloud that gather'd shape ; for it may be 

That, while I speak of it, a little while 

My heart may wander from its deeper woe. 

' O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, 
Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
I waited underneath the dawning hills ; 
Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, 
And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine ; 
Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, 

Leading a jet-black goat white-horn'd, white-hooved, 50 
Came up from reedy Simois all alone. 

' O mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
Far-off the torrent call'd me from the cleft ; 
Far up the solitary morning smote 
The streaks of virgin snow. With down-dropt eyes 
I sat alone : white-breasted like a star 
Fronting the dawn he moved ; a leopard skin 
Droop'd from his shoulder, but his sunny hair 
Cluster'd about his temples like a God's ; 
And his cheek brighten'd as the foam-bow brightens 60 
When the wind blows the foam, and all my heart 
Went forth to embrace him coming ere he came. 

* Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm 
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold, 
That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd 
And li'sten'd, the full-flowing river of speech 
Came down upon my heart. 



36 CENONE. 

'^ My own CEnone, 
Beautiful-brow 'd CEnone, my own soul, 
Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingraven ^o 

' For the most fair,' would seem to award it thine, 
As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt 
The knolls of Ida, loveKest in all grace 
Of movement, and the charm of married brows." 

' Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
He prest the blossom of his lips to mine, 
And added, " This was cast upon the board. 
When all the full-faced presence of the Gods 
Ranged in the halls of Peleus ; whereupon 
Rose feud, with question unto whom 't were due : 80 

But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve. 
Delivering, that to me, by common voice 
Elected umpire. Here comes to-day, 
Pallas and Aphrodite, claiming each 
This meed of fairest. Thou, within the cave 
Behind yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, 
Mayst well behold them unbeheld, unheard 
Hear all, and see thy Paris judge of Gods." 

' Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
It was the deep midnoon ; one silvery cloud 90 

Had lost his way between the piny sides 
Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, 
Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, 
And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, 
Violet, amaracus, and asphodel. 
Lotos and lilies ; and a wind arose, 
And overhead the wandering ivy and vine, 
This way and that, in many a wild festoon 
Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs 
With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. 100 



CENONE. 37 

* O mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
On the tree- tops a crested peacock lit, 

And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and lean'd 

Upon him, slowly dropping fragrant dew. 

Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom 

Coming thro' heaven, hke a light that grows 

Larger and clearer, with one mind the Gods 

Rise. up for reverence. She to Paris made 

Proffer of royal power, ample rule * 

Unquestion'd, overflowing revenue no 

Wherewith to embellish state, " from many a vale 

And river-sunder'd champaign clothed with corn, 

Or labor'd mine undrainable of ore. 

Honor," she said, " and homage, tax and toll. 

From many an inland town and haven large, 

Mast-throng'd beneath her shadowing citadel 

In glassy bays among her tallest towers." 

* O mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 

Still she spake on and still she spake of power, 

" Which in all action is the end of all ; 120 

Power fitted to the season ; wisdom-bred 

And throned of wisdom — from all neighbor crowns 

Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand 

Fail from the sceptre-staff. Such boon from me. 

From me, heaven's queen, Paris, to thee king-born, 

A shepherd all thy Hfe but yet king-born. 

Should come most welcome, seeing men, in power 

Only, are likest Gods, who have attain'd 

Rest in a happy place and quiet seats 

Above the thunder, with undying bliss 130 

In knowledge of their own supremacy." 

' Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
She ceased, and Paris held the costly fruit 



38 (ENONE. 

Out at arm's-length, so much the thought of power 
Flatter'd his spirit ; but Pallas where she stood 
Somewhat apart, her clear and bared limbs 
O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed spear 
Upon her pearly shoulder leaning cold. 
The while, above, her full and earnest eye 
Over her snow-cold breast and angry cheek 140 

Kept watch, waiting decision, made reply. 

* " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
Yet not for power (power of herself 
Would come uncall'd for), but to live by law. 
Acting the law we live by without fear ; 
And, because right is right, to follow right 
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." 

' Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
Again she said : " I woo thee not with gifts. 150 

Sequel of guerdon could not alter me 
To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am, 
So shalt thou find me fairest. 

Yet, indeed, 
If gazing on divinity disrobed 
Thy mortal eyes are frail to judge of fair, 
Unbiass'd by self-profit, oh ! rest thee sure 
That I shall love thee well and cleave to thee, 
So that my vigor, wedded to thy blood. 
Shall strike within thy pulses, like a God's, 
To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks, 160 

Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow 
Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will, 
Circled thro' all experiences, pure law, 
Commeasure perfect freedom." 



(ENONE. 39 

Here she ceased, 
And Paris ponder'd, and I cried, " O Paris, 
Give it to Pallas ! " but he heard me not, 
Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me ! 

' O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, 
Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
Idalian Aphrodite beautiful, 170 

Fresh as the foam, new -bathed in Paphian wells, 
With rosy slender fingers backward drew 
From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair 
Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat 
And shoulder ; from the violets her light foot 
Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form 
Between the shadows of the vine-bunches 
Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved. 

* Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 

She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes, 180 

The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh 

Half-whisper'd in his ear, " I promise thee 

The fairest and most loving wife in Greece." 

She spoke and laugh'd ; I shut my sight for fear. 

But when I look'd, Paris had raised his arm, 

And I beheld great Here's angry eyes, 

As she withdrew into the golden cloud. 

And I was left alone within the bower ; 

And from that time to this I am alone. 

And I shall be alone until I die. 190 

* Yet, mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
Fairest — why fairest wife ? am I not fair ? 
My love hath told me so a thousand times. 
Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday. 
When I past by, a wild and wanton pard. 
Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail 
Crouch'd fawnin.o: in the weed. Most loving is she ? 



40 (ENONE. 

Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms 
Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest 
Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew 
Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains 
Flash in the pools of whirling Simois ! 

' O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
They came, they cut away my tallest pines, 
My dark tall pines, that plumed the craggy ledge 
High over the blue gorge, and all between 
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract 
Foster'd the callow eaglet — from beneath 
Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn 
The panther's roar came muffled, while I sat 
Low in the valley. Never, never more 
Shall lone GEnone see the morning mist 
Sweep thro' them ; never see them overlaid 
With narrow moon-lit slips of silver cloud, 
Between the loud stream and the trembling stars. 

' O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds, 
Among the fragments tumbled from the glens, 
Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her, 
The Abominable, that uninvited came 
Into the fair Peleian banquet-hall. 
And cast the golden fruit upon the board, 
And bred this change ; that I might speak my mind. 
And tell her to her face how much I hate 
Her presence, hated both of Gods and men. 

* O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
Hath he not sworn his love a thousand times. 
In this green valley, under this green hill. 
Even on this hand, and sitting on this stone ? 
Seal'd it with kisses? water'd it with tears? 



CENONE. 41 

O happy tears, and how unlike to these ! 

O happy heaven, how canst thou see my face ? 

O happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight? 

death, death, death, thou ever-floating cloud. 
There are enough unhappy on this earth. 

Pass by the happy souls, that love to live ; 

1 pray thee, pass before my light of life, 
And shadow all my soul, that I may die. 
Thou weighest heavy on the heart within. 

Weigh heavy on my eyelids ; let me die. 240 

* O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts 
Do shape themselves within me, more and more, 
Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear 
Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, 
Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see 
My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother 
Conjectures of the features of her child 
Ere it is born : her child ! — a shudder comes 
Across me : never child be born of me, 250 

Unblest, to vex me with his father's eyes ! 

' O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone. 
Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me 
Walking the cold and starless road of death 
Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love 
With the Greek woman. I will rise and go 
Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth 
Talk with the wild Cassandra, for she says 
A fire dances before her, and a sound 260 

Rings ever in her ears of armed men. 
What this may be I know not, but I know 
That, wheresoe'er I am by night and day. 
All earth and air seem only burning fire.' 



42 THE LOTOS-EATERS. 




THE LOTOS-EATERS. 

* Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward the land, 
' This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.' 
In the afternoon they came unto a land 
In which it seemed always afternoon. 
All round the coast the languid air did swoon, 
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. 
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon ; 
And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. 

A land of streams ! some, like a downward smoke. 

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; 

And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, 

Rolling a slumberous sheet of foam below. 

They saw the gleaming river seaward flow 

From the inner land : far off, three mountain-tops, 

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, 

Stood sunset-flush'd ; and, dew'd with showery drops, 

Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. 

The charmed sunset linger'd low adown 

In the red West : thro' mountain clefts the dale 



THE LOTOS-EATERS. 43 

Was seen far inland, and the yellow down 

Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale 

And meadow, set with slender galingale ; 

A land where all things always seem'd the same ! 

And round about the keel with faces pale. 

Dark faces pale against that rosy flame. 

The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. 

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem. 

Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave 

To each ; but whoso did receive of them 30 

And taste, to him the gushing of the wave 

Far far away did seem to mourn and rave 

On alien shores ; and if his fellow spake. 

His voice was thin, as voices from the grave ; 

And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, 

And music in his ears his beating heart did make. 

They sat them down upon the yellow sand. 

Between the sun and moon upon the shore ; 

And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, 

Of child, and wife, and slave ; but evermore 4° 

Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar. 

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. 

Then some one said, ^ We will return no more ; ' 

And all at once they sang, ' Our island home 

Is far beyond the wave ; we will no longer roam.' 

CHORIC SONG. 

There is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 
Or night-dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; 



44 THE LOTOS-EATERS. 

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 50 

Than tired eyeHds upon tired eyes ; 

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 

Here are cool mosses deep, 

And thro' the moss the ivies creep, 

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. 

II. 

Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, 

And utterly consumed with sharp distress. 

While all things else have rest from weariness? 

All things have rest : why should we toil alone, 60 

We only toil, who are the first of things, 

And make perpetual moan, 

Still from one sorrow to another thrown ; 

Nor ever fold our wings, 

And cease from wanderings, 

Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ; 

Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings, 

* There is no joy but calm ! ' 

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things ? 

III. 

Lo ! in the middle of the wood, 70 

The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud 

With winds upon the branch, and there 

Grows green and broad, and takes no care, 

Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon 

Nightly dew- fed ; and turning yellow 

Falls, and floats adown the air. 

Lo ! sweeten'd with the summer light, 

The full- juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, 

Drops in a silent autumn night. 



THE LOTOS-EATERS. 45 

All its allotted length of days, 80 

The flower ripens in its place, 
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, 
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. 

IV. 

Hateful is the dark-blue sky. 

Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. 

Death is the end of life ; ah, why 

Should life all labor be? 

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast. 

And in a little while our lips are dumb. 

Let us alone. What is it that will last ? 90 

All things are taken from us, and become 

Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. 

Let us alone. What pleasure can we have 

To war with evil ? Is there any peace 

In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? 

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave 

In silence ; ripen, fall, and cease : 

Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease. 



How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream. 

With half-shut eyes ever to seem 

Falling asleep in a half-dream ! 

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light. 

Which will not leave the m)Trh-bush on the height ; 

To hear each other's whisper'd speech ; 

Eating the Lotos day by day. 

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach. 

And tender curving lines of creamy spray ; 

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly 

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy ; 



4^ THE LOTOS-EATERS. 

To muse and brood and live again in memory no 

With those old faces of our infancy 

Heap'd over with a mound of grass, 

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass ! 

VI. 

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, 

And dear the last embraces of our wives 

And their warm tears ; but all hath suffer'd change : 

For surely now our household hearths are cold ; 

Our sons inherit us ; our looks are strange • 

And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. 

Or else the island princes over-bold 120 

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings 

Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, 

And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. 

Is there confusion in the little isle ? 

Let what is broken so remain. 

The Gods are hard to reconcile ; 

'T is hard to settle order once again. 

There is confusion worse than death, 

Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, 

Long labor unto aged breath, 130 

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars, 

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. 

VII. 

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly. 

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) 

With half-dropt eyelid still, 

Beneath a heaven dark and holy. 

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly 

His waters from the purple hill — 

To hear the dewy echoes calling 

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine — mo 



THE LOTOS-EATERS. 47 

To watch the emerald-color'd water falling 

Thro' many a woven acanthus- wreath divine ! 

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, 

Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. 

VIII. 

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak ; 

The Lotos blows by every winding creek ; 

All day the ^yind breathes low with mellower tone ; 

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone 

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is 

blown. 
We have had enough of action, and of motion we, 150 

RoU'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was 

seething free. 
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in 

the sea. 
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, 
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined 
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. 
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd 
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly 

curl'd 
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world ; 
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, 
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps 

and fiery sands, 160 

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and 

praying hands. 
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song 
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong. 
Like a tale of litde meaning tho' the words are strong ; 
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, 
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, 
Storing yearly little dues of wheat and wine and oil ; 



48 THE PALACE OF ART. 

Till they perish and they suffer — some, 't is whisper'd — 

down in hell 
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, 
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. 170 

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore 
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar ; 
O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. 



THE PALACE OF ART. 

I BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house, 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. 
I said, ' O Soul, make merry and carouse. 
Dear soul, for all is well.' 

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass, 

I chose. The ranged ramparts bright 
From level meadow-bases of deep grass 
Suddenly scaled the light. 

Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf 

The rock rose clear, or winding stair. 
' My soul would live alone unto herself 
In her high palace there. 

And 'while the world runs round and round,' I said, 

' Reign thou apart, a quiet king, 
Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade 
Sleeps on his luminous ring.' 

To which my soul made answer readily : 

' Trust me, in bliss I shall abide 
In this great mansion that is built for me. 
So royal-rich and wide.' 



THE PALACE OF ART. 49 

Four courts I made, East, West, and South, and North, 

In each a squared lawn, wherefrom 
The golden gorge of dragons spouted forth 
A flood of fountain-foam. 

And round the cool green courts there ran a row 

Of cloisters, branch'd like mighty woods, 
Echoing all night to that sonorous flow 
Of spouted fountain-floods. 

And round the roofs a gilded gallery, 

That lent broad verge to distant lands, 30 

Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky 
Dipt down to sea and sands. 

From those four jets four currents in one swell 

Across the mountain stream'd below 
In misty folds, that floating as they fell 
Lit up a torrent-bow. 

And high on every peak a statue seem'd 

To hang on tiptoe, tossing up 
A cloud of incense of all odor steam'd 

From out a golden cup. 40 

So that she thought, ' And who shall gaze upon 

My palace with unblinded eyes, 
While this great bow will waver in the sun. 
And that sweet incense rise ? ' 

For that sweet incense rose and never fail'd, 

And, while day sank or mounted higher, 
The light aerial gallery, golden-rail'd. 
Burnt like a fringe of fire. 

4 



50 THE PALACE OF ART. 

Likewise the deep-set windows, stain'd and traced, 

Would seem slow-flaming crimson fires 50 

From shadow'd grots of arches interlaced, 
And tipt with frost-like spires. 

Full of long-sounding corridors it was, 

That over-vaulted grateful gloom, 
Thro' which the livelong day my soul did pass. 
Well-pleased, from room to room. 

Full of great rooms and small the palace stood. 

All various, each a perfect whole 
From living Nature, fit for every mood 

And change of my still soul. 60 

For some were hung with arras green and blue. 

Showing a gaudy summer-morn. 
Where with puff d cheek the belted hunter blew 
His wreathed bugle-horn. 

One seem'd all dark and red, — a tract of sand. 

And some one pacing there -alone, 
Who paced forever in a glimmering land, 
Lit with a low large moon. 

One show'd an iron coast and angry waves. 

You seem'd to hear them climb and fall 7° 

And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves, 
Beneath the windy wall. 

And one, a full-fed river winding slow 

By herds upon an endless plain. 
The ragged rims of thunder brooding low. 
With shadow-streaks of rain. 



THE PALACE OF ART, $1 

And one, the reapers at their sultry toil. 

In front they bound the sheaves. Behind 
Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil 

And hoary to the wind. 80 

And one, a foreground black with stones and slags, 

Beyond, a line of heights, and higher 
All barr'd with long white cloud the scornful crags, 
And highest, snow and fire. 

And one, an English home, — gray twilight pour'd 

On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 
Softer than sleep, — all things in order stored, 
A haunt of ancient Peace. 

Nor these alone, but every landscape fair, 

As fit for every mood of mind, 90 

Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there, 
Not less than truth design'd. 

Or the maid-mother by a crucifix. 
In tracts of pasture sunny-warm, 
Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx 
Sat smiling, babe in arm. 

Or in a clear-wall'd city on the sea, 
Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair 
Wound with white roses, slept Saint Cecily ; 

An angel look'd at her. 100 

Or thronging all one porch of Paradise, 

A group of Houris bow'd to see 
The dying Islamite, with hands and eyes 
That said, We wait for thee. 



52 



THE PALACE OF ART. 




Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son 
In some fair space of sloping greens 
Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon, 
And watch'd by weeping queens. 



Or hollowing one hand against his ear, 

To list a footfall, ere he saw 
The wood-nymph, stay'd the Ausonian king to hear 
Of wisdom and of law. 



THE PALACE OF ART. S3 

Or over hills with peaky tops engrail'd, 
And many a tract of palm and rice, 
The throne of Indian Cama slowly sail'd 
A summer fann'd with spice. 

Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasp'd, 
From off her shoulder backward, borne : 
From one hand droop'd a crocus ; one hand grasp'd 

The mild bull's golden horn. 120 

Or else flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh 

Half- buried in the eagle's down. 
Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky 
Above the pillar'd town. 

Nor these alone ; but every legend fair 
Which the supreme Caucasian mind 
Carved out of Nature for itself, was there, 
Not less than Hfe design'd. 

Then in the towers I placed great bells that swung, 

Moved of themselves, with silver sound ; 130 

And with choice paintings of wise men I hung 
The royal dais round. 

For there was Milton like a seraph strong, 

Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild ; 
And there the world- worn Dante grasp'd his song, 
And somewhat grimly smiled. 

And there the Ionian father of the rest ; 

A million wrinkles carved his skin ; 
A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast. 

From cheek and throat and chin. 140 



54 THE PALACE OF ART. 

Above, the fair hall-ceiling stately-set 

Many an arch high up did lift, 
And angels rising and descending met 
With interchange of gift. 

Below was all mosaic choicely plann'd 

With cycles of the human tale 
Of this wide world, the times of every land 
So wrought, they will not fail. 

The people here, a beast of burden slow, 

Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and stings ; 150 

Here play'd a tiger, rolling to and fro 
The heads and crowns of kings ; 

Here rose an athlete, strong to break or bind 

All force in bonds that might endure. 
And here once more like some sick man declined. 
And trusted any cure. 

But over these she trod ; and those great bells 

Began to chime. She took her throne ; 
She sat betwixt the shining oriels, 

To sing her songs alone. 160 

And thro' the topmost oriels' color'd flame 

Two godlike faces gazed below ; 
Plato the wise, and large-brow' d Verulam, 
The first of those who know. 

And all those names, that in their motion were 

Full- welling fountain-heads of change, 
Betwixt the slender shafts were blazon'd fair 
In diverse raiment strange ; 



THE PALACE OF ART. 55 

Thro' which the lights, rose, amber, emerald, blue, 

Flush'd in her temples and her eyes, 170 

And from her lips, as morn from Memnon, drew 
Rivers of melodies. 

No nightingale delighteth to prolong 

Her low preamble all alone, 
More than my soul to hear her echo'd song 
Throb thro' the ribbed stone ; 

Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth, 

Joying to feel herself alive, 
Lord over Nature, lord of the visible earth, 

Lord of the senses five ; 180 

Communing with herself: 'All these are mine. 

And let the world have peace or wars, 
'Tis one to me.' She — when young night divine 
Crown'd dying day with stars, 

Making sweet close of his delicious toils — 

Lit light in wreaths and anadems, 
And pure quintessences of precious oils 
In hollow'd moons of gems, 

To mimic heaven ; and clapt her hands and cried, 

' I marvel if my still delight 190 

In this great house so royal-rich and wide 
Be flatter' d to the height. 

' O all things fair to sate my various eyes ! 
O shapes and hues that please me well ! 
O silent faces of the Great and Wise, 
My Gods, with whom I dwell ! 



$6 THE PALACE OF ART. 

* O Godlike isolation which art mine, 
I can but count thee perfect gain, 
What time 1 watch the darkening droves of swine 
That range on yonder plain. 

' In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin. 

They graze and wallow, breed and sleep \ 
And oft some brainless devil enters in. 
And drives them to the deep.' 

Then of the moral instinct would she prate, 

And of the rising from the dead, 
As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate ; 
And at the last she said ; 

' I take possession of man's mind and deed. 

I care not what the sects may brawl. 
I sit as God holding no form of creed. 
But contemplating all/ 

Full oft the riddle of the painful earth 

Flash'd thro' her as she sat alone. 
Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, 
And intellectual throne. 

And so she throve and prosper'd ; so three years 

She prosper'd : on the fourth she fell, 
Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, 
Struck thro' with pangs of hell. 

Lest she should fail and perish utterly, 

God, before whom ever lie bare 
The abysmal deeps of personality, 
Plagued her with sore despair. 



THE PALACE OF ART. 57 

When she would think, where'er she turn'd her sight 

The airy hand confusion wrought, 

Wrote * Mene, mene,' and divided quite 

The kingdom of her thought. 

Deep dread and loathing of her solitude 

Fell on her, from which mood was born 230 

Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood 
Laughter at her self-scorn. 

* What ! is not this my place of strength,' she said, 

* My spacious mansion built for me. 
Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid 
Since my first memory ? ' 

But in dark corners of her palace stood 

Uncertain shapes ; and unawares 
On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, 

And horrible nightmares, 240 

And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, 

And, with dim fretted foreheads all, 
On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, 
That stood against the wall. 

A spot of dull stagnation, without light 

Or power of movement, seem'd my soul, 
'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite 
Making for one sure goal. 

A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, 

Left on the shore ; that hears all night 250 

The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
Their moon-led waters white. 



53 THE PALACE OF ART. 

A star that with the choral starry dance 

Join'd not, but stood, and standing saw 
The hollow orb of moving Circumstance 
Roll'd round by one fixt law. 

Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. 

' No voice,' she shriek'd in that lone hall, 
' No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world ! 

One deep, deep silence all ! ' 260 

She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, 

Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame. 
Lay there exiled from eternal God, 
Lost to her place and name ; 

And death and life she hated equally, 

And nothing saw, for her despair. 
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, 
No comfort anywhere ; 

Remaining utterly confused with fears. 

And ever worse with growing time, 270 

And ever unrelieved by dismal tears, 
And all alone in crime. 

Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round 

With blackness as a soHd wall, 
Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound 
Of human footsteps fall : 

As in strange lands a traveller walking slow, 

In doubt and great perplexity, 
A little before moon-rise hears the low 

Moan of an unknown sea ; 280 



THE PALACE OF ART. 

And knows not if it be thunder or a sound 
Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry 
Of great wild beasts ; then thinketh, ' I have found 
A new land, but I die.' 

She howl'd aloud, ' I am on fire within. 

There comes no murmur of reply. 
What is it that will take away my sin, 
And save me lest I die ? ' 

So when four years were wholly finished, 
She threw her royal robes away. 

* Make me a cottage in the vale,' she said, 

* Where I may mourn and pray. 

* Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are 

So lightly, beautifully built ; 
Perchance I may return with others there 
When I have purged my guilt.' 



59 




6o A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN: 




i 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 

I READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade, 
' The Legend of Good Women' long ago 

Sung by the morning star of song, who made 
His music heard below ; 

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath 
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill 

The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
With sounds that echo still. 

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art 

Held me above the subject, as strong gales 

Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho' my heart, 
Brimful of those wild tales. 

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land 

I saw, wherever light illumineth, 
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand 

The downward slope to death. 

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song 

Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars, 

And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong, 
And trumpets blown for wars ; 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 6 1 

And clattering flints batter'd with clanging hoofs : 
And I saw crowds in column 'd sanctuaries; 

And forms that past at windows and on roofs 
Of marble palaces ; 

Corpses across the threshold ; heroes tall 

Dislodging pinnacle and parapet 
Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall ; 

Lances in ambush set ; 

And high shrine-doors burst thro' with heated blasts 

That run before the fluttering tongues of fire ; 30 

White surf wind-scatter'd over sails and masts, 
And ever climbing higher ; 

Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates, 
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes. 

Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates. 
And hush'd seraglios. 

So shape chased shape as swift as, when to land 
Bluster the winds and tides the selfsame way, 

Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand. 

Torn from the fringe of spray. 40 

I started once, or seem'd to start in pain. 

Resolved on noble things, and strove to speak, 

As when a great thought strikes along the brain, 
And flushes all the cheek. 

And once my arm was lifted to hew down 

A cavalier from off his saddle-bow. 
That bore a lady from a leaguer'd town ; 

And then, I know not how, 



62 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 

All those sharp fancies by down-lapsing thought 

Stream'd onward, lost their edges, and did creep 50 

Roll'd on each other, rounded, smooth'd, and brought 
Into the gulfs of sleep. 

At last methought that I had wandered far 

In an old wood : fresh-wash'd in coolest dew, 

The maiden splendors of the morning star 
Shook in the steadfast blue. 

Enormous elm-tree boles did stoop and lean 
Upon the dusky brushwood underneath 

Their broad curved branches, fledged with clearest green, 
New from its silken sheath. 60 

The dim red morn had died, her journey done, 

And with dead lips smiled at the twilight plain. 

Half-fallen across the threshold of the sun. 
Never to rise again. 

There was no motion in the dumb dead air, 
Not any song of bird or sound of rill ; 

Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre 
Is not so deadly still 

As that wide forest. Growths of jasmine turn'd 

Their humid arms festooning tree to tree, 70 

And at the root thro' lush green grasses burn'd 
The red anemone. 

I knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, I knew 
The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn 

On those long, rank, dark wood- walks drench 'd in dew, 
Leading from lawn to lawn. 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 



63 



i|liiliiTiilIIiIl^illiIlii™fff''ipf«IIIilllIllillllIlllIlIillllill 




The smell of violets, hidden in the green, 

Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame 

The times when I remember to have been 
Joyful and free from blame. 

And from within me a clear undertone 

Thrill'd thro* mine ears in that unblissful clime, 
' Pass freely thro' ; the wood is all thine own, 

Until the end of time.' 



At length I saw a lady within call, 

Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there j 
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, 

And most divinely fair. 

Her loveliness with shame and with surprise 

Froze my swift speech ; she turning on my face 90 

The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes, 
Spoke slowly in her place. 



64 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN; 

* I had great beauty ; ask thou not my name : 

No one can be more wise than destiny. 
Many drew swords and died. Where'er I came 
I brought calamity.* 

* No marvel, sovereign lady : in fair field 

Myself for such a face had boldly died/ 
I answer'd free ; and turning I appeal'd 
To one that stood beside. 

But she, with sick and scornful looks averse, 

To her full height her -stately stature draws; 

* My youth,' she said, * was blasted with a curse ; 

This woman was the cause. 

* I was cut off from hope in that sad place 

Which men call'd Aulis in those iron years : 
My father held his hand upon his face j 
I, blinded with my tears, 

* Still strove to speak : my voice was thick with sighs 

As in a dream. Dimly I could descry 
The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes. 
Waiting to see me die. 

* The high masts flicker'd as they lay afloat ; 

The crowds, the temples, waver'd, and the shore ; 
The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat ; 
Touch'd ; and 1 knew no more.' 

Whereto the other with a downward brow : 

* I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam, 

Whirl'd by the wind, had roll'd me deep below, 
Tiien when I left my home.* 



A BREAM OF FAIR WOMEN-. 65 

Her slow full words sank thro' the silence drear, 
As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea : 

Sudden I heard a voice that cried, * Come here, 
That I may look on thee.' 

I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, 
One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll'd ; 

A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, 
Brow-bound with burning gold. 

She, flashing forth -a haughty smfle, began : 

' I govern'd men by change, and so I sway'd 130 

All moods. 'T is long since I have seen a man. 

Once, like the moon, I made 

* The ever-shifting currents of the blood 

According to my humor ebb and flow. 
I have no men to govern in this wood : 
That makes my only woe. 

* Nay — yet it chafes me that I could not bend 

One will ; nor tame and tutor with mine eye 
That dull cold-blooded Caesar. Prithee, friend, 

Where is Mark Antony? 140 

* The man, my lover, with whom I rode sublime 

On Fortune's neck : we sat as God by God ; 
The Nilus would have risen before his time 
And flooded at our nod. 

' We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit 

Lamps which outburn'd Canopus. O my life 

In Egypt ! O the dalliance and the wit, 
The flattery and the strife, 

5 



66 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 

* And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms, 

My Hercules, my Roman Antony, 150 

My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms, 
Contented there to die ! 

' And there he died ; and when I heard my name 
Sigh'd forth with life I would not brook my fear 

Of the other : with a worm I balk'd his fame. 
What else was left ? look here ! ' 

(With that she tore her robe apart, and half 
The polish'd argent of her breast to sight 

Laid bare. Thereto she pointed witff a laugh, 

Showing the aspic's bite.) 160 

' I died a queen. The Roman soldier found 
Me lying dead, my crown about my brows, 

A name forever ! — lying robed and crown'd, 
Worthy a Roman spouse.' 

Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range 

Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance 

From tone to tone, and glided thro' all change 
Of liveliest utterance. 

When she made pause I knew not for delight ; 

Because with sudden motion from the ground 170 
She raised her piercing orbs, and fill'd with light 

The interval of sound. 

Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts ; 

As once they drew into two burning rings 
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts 

Qf captains and of kings. 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 67 

Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard 

A noise of some one coming thro' the lawn, 

And singing clearer than the crested bird 

That claps his wings at dawn. 180 

' The torrent brooks of hallow'd Israel 

From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon, 

Sound all night long, in falling thro* the dell, 
Far-heard beneath the moon. 

* The balmy moon of blessed Israel 

Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine ; 
All night the splinter' d crags that wall the dell 

With spires of silver shine.' 

As one that museth where broad sunshine laves 

The lawn of some cathedral, thro' the door 190 

Hearing the holy organ rolling waves 
Of sound on roof and floor 

Within, and anthem sung, is charm 'd and tied 

To where he stands, — so stood I, when that flow 

Of music left the lips of her that died 
To save her father's vow ; 

The daughter of the warrior Gileadite, 

A maiden pure ; as when she went along 

From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with welcome light, 

With timbrel and with song. 200 

My words leapt forth : ' Heaven heads the count of crimes 
With that wild oath.' She render'd answer high : 

' Not so, nor once alone ; a thousand times 
I would be born and die. 



68 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN: 

f Single I grew, like some green plant, whose root 
Creeps to the garden water-pipes beneath, 

Feeding the flower ; but ere my flower to fruit 
Changed, I was ripe for death. 

* My God, my land, my father, — these did move 

Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave, 
Lower'd softly with a threefold cord of love 
Down to a silent grave. 

* And I went mourning, " No fair Hebrew boy 

Shall smile away my maiden blame among 
The Hebrew mothers " — emptied of all joy, 
Leaving the dance and song, 

* Leaving the olive-gardens far below. 

Leaving the promise of my bridal bower, 
The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow 
Beneath the battled tower. 

' The light white cloud swam over us. Anon 
We heard the lion roaring from his den ; 

We saw the large white stars rise one by one, 
Or, from the darken'd glen, 

* Saw God divide the night with flying flame. 

And thunder on the everlasting hills. 
I heard Him, for He spake, and grief became 
A solemn scorn of ills. 

* When the next moon was roll'd into the sky. 

Strength came to me that equall'd my desire. 
How beautiful a thing it was to die 
For God and for my sire ! 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN: 69 

' It comforts me in this one thought to dwell, 
That I subdued me to my father's will ; 

Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell, 
Sweetens the spirit still. 

' Moreover it is written that my race 

Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer 

On Arnon unto Minneth.' Here her face 

Glow'd, as I look'd at her. 240 

She lock'd her lips ; she left me where I stood : • 
* Glory to God,* she sang, and past afar, 

Thridding the sombre boscage of the wood, 
Toward the morning-star. 

Losing her carol I stood pensively. 

As one that from a casement leans his head, 

When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly, 
And the old year is dead. 

' Alas ! alas ! ' a low voice, full of care, 

Murmur'd beside me : ' Turn and look on me ; 250 
I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair. 

If what I was I be. 

' Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor ! 

O me, that I should ever see the light ! 
Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor 

Do hunt me, day and night.' 

She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust : 

To whom the Egyptian : *0, you tamely died ! 
You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust 

The dagger thro' her side.' 260 



70 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN: 

With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams, 
Stolen to my brain, dissolved the mystery 

Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams 
Ruled in the eastern sky. 

Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark, 

Ere I saw her who clasp'd in her last trance 

Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of Arc, 
A light of ancient France ; 

Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death, 

Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, 270 

Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, 
Sweet as new buds in Spring. 

No memory labors longer from the deep 

Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore 

That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep 
To gather and tell o'er 

Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain 
Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike 

Into that wondrous track of dreams again ! 

But no two dreams are like. 280 

As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, 
Desiring what is mingled with past years, 

In yearnings that can never be exprest 
By signs or groans or tears ; 

Because all words, tho' cull'd with choicest art, 
Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, 

Wither beneath the palate, and the heart 
Faints, faded by its heat. 



THE EPIC. 



71 




THE EPIC. 



At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve, — 
The game of forfeits done — the girls all kiss'd 
Beneath the sacred bush and past away — 
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, 
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl, 



72 THE EPIC. 

Then half-way ebb'd : and there we held a talk, 

How all the old honor had from Christmas gone, 

Or gone or dwindled down to some odd games 

In some odd nooks like this ; till I, tired out 

With cutting eights that day upon the pond. 

Where, three times slipping from the outer edge, 

I bump'd the ice into three several stars, 

Fell in a doze ; and half-awake I heard 

The parson taking wide and wider sweeps, 

Now harping on the church-commissioners. 

Now hawking at geology and schism ; 

Until I woke, and found him settled down 

Upon the general decay of faith 

Right thro* the world, ' at home was little left, 

And none abroad : there was no anchor, none, : 

To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapt his hand 

On Everard's shoulder, with ' I hold by him.' 

*And I,' quoth Everard, 'by the wassail -bowl.' 

* Why yes,' I said, ' we knew your gift that way 
At college ; but another which you had — 

I mean of verse (for so we held it then), 

What came of that ? ' * You know,' said Frank, ' he burnt 

His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books ' — 

And then to me demanding why? * O, sir, 

He thought that nothing new was said, or else 

Something so said 't was nothing — that a truth 

Looks freshest in the fashion of the day : 

God knows : he has a mint of reasons : ask. 

It pleased 7ne well enough.' * Nay, nay,' said Hall, 

* Why take the style of those heroic times ? 
For nature brings not back the mastodon, 
Nor we those times ; and why should any man 
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine 
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth, 

Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.' * But I,' 



THE EPIC. ' 73 

Said Francis, ' pick'd the eleventh from this hearth, 

And have it : keep a thing, its use will come. 

I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' 

He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse 

That hears the corn-bin open, prick' d my ears ; 

For I remember'd Everard's college fame 

When we were Freshmen : then at my request 

He brought it ; and the poet, little urged, 

But with some prelude of disparagement, 

Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, so 

Deep-chested music, and to this result. 



MORTE D'ARTHUR. 

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd 

Among the mountains by the winter sea ; 

Until King Arthur's table, man by man. 

Had fallen in Lyonness about their lord, 

King Arthur : then, because his wound was deep, 

The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, 

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights. 

And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, 

A broken chancel with a broken cross, 60 

That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 

On one side lay the ocean, and on one 

Lay a great water, and the moon was full. 

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : 
' The sequel of to-day unsolders all 
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep 
They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we 
Shall never more, at any future time, 
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, 70 

Walking about the gardens and the halls 



74 THE EPIC. 

Of Camelot, as in the days that were. 

I perish by this people which I made, — 

Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again 

To rule once more — but let what will be, be, 

I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm 

That without help I cannot last till morn. 

Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, 

Which was my pride : for thou rememberest how 

In those old days, one summer noon, an arm 80 

Rose up from out the bosom of the lake. 

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. 

Holding the sword — and how I row'd across 

And took it, and have worn it, like a king ; 

And, wheresoever I am sung or told 

In aftertime, this also shall be known : 

But now delay not ; take Excalibur, 

And fling him far into the middle mere ; 

Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word.' 

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere : 90 

' It is not meet. Sir King, to leave thee thus, 
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm. 
A little thing may harm a wounded man. 
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full. 
Watch what I see, and hghtly bring thee word.* 

So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept 
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs. 
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, 
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang 
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down 100 
By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock, 
Came on the shining levels of the lake. 

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, 
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, 
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth 
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt : 



THE EPIC. 75 

For all the haft twinkled with diamond studs, 

Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work 

Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long 

That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood, no 

This way and that dividing the swift mind. 

In act to throw ; but at the last it seem'd 

Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd 

There in the many-knotted water-flags. 

That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. 

So strode he back slow to the wounded king. ^ 

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : 
* Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave ? 
What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard ? ' 

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : 120 

' I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, 
And the wild water lapping on the crag.' 

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale : 
'Thou hast betray 'd thy nature and thy name. 
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd 
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight \ 
For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, 
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. 
This is a shameful thing for men to lie. 
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again 130 

As thou art hef and dear, and do the thing 
I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word.' 

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time 
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere. 
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought ; 
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt. 
How curiously and strangely chased, he smote 
His palms together, and he cried aloud. 

' And if indeed I cast the brand away. 
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, 140 

Should thus be lost forever from the earth, 



76 THE EPIC. 

Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. 

What good should follow this, if this were done ? 

What harm, undone ? deep harm to disobey, 

Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. 

Were it well to obey then, if a king demand 

An act unprofitable, against himself ? 

The king is sick, and knows not what he does. 

What record, or what relic of my lord 

Should be to aftertime, but empty breath 

And rumors of a doubt ? but were this kept. 

Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, 

Some one might show it at a joust of arms. 

Saying, " King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, 

Wrought by the lonely maiden of the lake. 

Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps 

Upon the hidden bases of the hills." 

So might some old man speak in the aftertime 

To all the people, winning reverence ; 

But now much honor and much fame were lost.' 

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit. 
And hid Excalibur the second time. 
And so strode back slow to the wounded king. 

Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily ; 
^ What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard ? ' 

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : 
'■ I heard the water lapping on the crag, 
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.' 

To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath : 
' Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, 
Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! 
Authority forgets a dying king. 
Laid widow'd of the power in his eye 
That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art, 
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights. 
In whom should meet the offices of all, 



THE EPIC. 77 

Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt ; 

Either from lust of gold, or like a girl 

Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. 

Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, 180 

And the third time may prosper, get thee hence ; 

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, 

I will arise and slay thee with my hands.' 

Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, 
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged 
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword. 
And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand 
Made hghtnings in the splendor of the moon, 
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, 
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, 190 

Seen where the moving isles of winter shock 
By night, with noises of the northern sea. 
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur : 
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm 
Cloth'd in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 
Three times, and drew him under in the mere. 
And lightly went the other to the king. 

Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath : 
* Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. 200 

Speak out : what is it thou hast heard, or seen ? ' 

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : 
' Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems 
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, 
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, 
Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, 
So great a miracle as yonder hilt. 
Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; 
But when I look'd again, behold an arm. 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 210 

That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.' 



78 THE EPIC. 

And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard : 
^ My end draws nigh ; 't is time that I were gone. 
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, 
And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear 
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.' 

So saying, from the pavement he half rose, 
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm. 
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes 
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere 
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears. 
And would have spoken, but he found not words, , 
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, 
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, 
And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. 

But, as he walk'd. King Arthur panted hard, 
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed 
When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the king. 
Muttering and murmuring at his ear, * Quick, quick ! 
I fear it is too late, and I shall die.' 
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge. 
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd, 
Larger than human on the frozen hills. 
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry 
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. 
Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves 
And barren chasms, and all to left and right 
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based 
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang 
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — 
And on a sudden, lo J the level lake, 
And the long glories of the winter moon. 

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge. 
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern. 
Beneath them ; and descending they were ware 
That all the decks were dense with stately forms 
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — bv these 



THE EPIC. 79 

Three queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose 

A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, 25° 

And, as it were one voice, an agony 

Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills 

All night in a waste land, where no one comes. 

Or hath come, since the making of the world. 

Then murmur'd Arthur, ' Place me in the barge,' 
And to the barge they came. There those three queens 
Put forth their hands, and took the king, and wept. 
But she that rose the tallest of them all 
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap. 
And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, 260 
And call'd him by his name, complaining loud. 
And dropping bitter tears against his brow 
Striped with dark blood : for all his face was white 
And colorless, and like the wither'd moon 
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; 
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops 
Of onset ; and the light and lustrous curls — 
That made his forehead like a rising sun 
High from the dais-throne — were parch'd with dust ; 
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, 270 

Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. 
So like a shatter'd column lay the king ; 
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, 
From spur to plume a star of tournament. 
Shot thro' the hsts at Camelot, and charged 
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. 

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, 
* Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go ? 
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes ? 
For now I see the true old tin-^es are dead, 280 

When every morning brought a noble chance. 
And every chance brought out a noble knight. 
Such times have been not since the light that led 
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. 



So THE EPIC. 

But now the whole round table is dissolved 
Which was an image of the mighty world ; 
And I, the last, go forth companionless, 
And the days darken round me, and the years, 
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.' 

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge ; 
* The old order changeth, yielding place to new. 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
Comfort thyself : what comfort is in me ? 
I have lived my life, and that which I have done 
May He within himself make pure ! but thou. 
If thou shouldst never see my face again. 
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 
But now farewell. I am going a long way 
With these thou seest — if indeed I go — 
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 
To the island-valley of Avilion ; 
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it Hes 
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns 
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.' 

So said he, and the bacge with oar and sail 
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan 
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death. 
Ruffles her pure cold plume,, and takes the flood 
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere 



THE EPIC. 8 1 

Revolving many memories, till the hull 

Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, 

And on the mere the wailing died away. 

Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long 
Had wink'd and threaten'd darkness, flared and fell ; 
At which the parson, sent to sleep with sound. 
And waked with silence, grunted ^ Good ! ' but we 
Sat rapt : it was the tone with which he read — 
Perhaps some modern touches here and there 
Redeem 'd it from the charge of nothingness — 330 

Or else we loved the man, and prized his work ; 
I know not : but we sitting, as I said, 
The cock crew loud ; as at that time of year 
The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn : 
Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill-used, 
* There now — that 's nothing ! ' drew a little back, 
And drove his heel into the smoulder'd log, 
That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue : 
And so to bed ; where yet in sleep I seem'd 
To sail with Arthur under looming shores, 340 

Point after point ; till on to dawn, when dreams 
Begin to feel the truth and stir of day. 
To me, methought, who waited with the crowd, 
There came a bark that, blowing forward, bore 
King Arthur, like a modern gentleman 
Of stateliest port ; and all the people cried, 
' Arthur is come again : he cannot die.' 
Then those that stood upon the hills behind 
Repeated — ' Come again, and thrice as fair ; * 
And, further inland, voices echoed — ' Come 350 

With all good things, and war shall be no more.' 
At this a hundred bells began to peal. 
That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed 
The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas morn. 
6 



82 



THE TALKING OAK. 




THE TALKING OAK. 



Once more the gate behind me falls ; 

Once more before my face 
I see the moulder'd Abbey-walls, 

That stand within the chace. 



THE TALKING OAK. ^Z 

Beyond the lodge the city lies, 

Beneath its drift of smoke ; 
And ah ! with what delighted eyes 

I turn to yonder oak. 

For when my passion first began, 

Ere that which in me burn'd, lo 

The love that makes me thrice a man, 

Could hope itself return'd, . 

To yonder oak within the field 

I spoke without restraint, 
And with a larger faith appeal'd 

Than Papist unto Saint. 

For oft I talk'd with him apart. 

And told him of my choice, 
Until he plagiarized a heart. 

And answer'd with a voice. 20 

The' what he whisper'd under heaven 

None else could understand, 
I found him garrulously given, 

A babbler in the land. 

But since I heard him make reply 

Is many a weary hour ; 
'Twere well to question him, and try 

If yet he keeps the power. 

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern, 

Broad Oak of Sumner-chace, 30 

Whose topmost branches can discern 

The roofs of Sumner-place ! 



84 THE TALKING OAK. 

Say thou, whereon I carved her name, 

If ever maid or spouse. 
As fair as my Olivia, came 

To rest beneath thy boughs. — 

' O Walter, I have shelter'd here 

Whatever maiden grace 
The good old summers, year by year, 

Made ripe in Sumner-chace ; 40 

' Old summers, when the monk was fat. 

And, issuing shorn and sleek. 
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat 

The girls upon the cheek, 

' Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence, 

And number'd bead and shrift. 
Bluff Harry broke into the spence, 

And tum'd the cowls adrift : 

' And I have seen some score of those 

Fresh faces that would thrive 50 

When his man-minded offset rose 
To chase the deer at five ; 

* And all that from the town would stroll, 

Till that wild wind made work 
In which the gloomy brewer's soul 

Went by me, like a stork : 

' The slight she-slips of loyal blood, 

And others, passing praise. 
Strait-laced, but all-too-full in bud 

For puritanic stays : 60 



THE TALKING OAK. 85 

' And I have shadow'd many a group 

Of beauties that were born 
In teacup-times of hood and hoop, 

Or while the patch was worn ; 

' And, leg and arm with love-knots gay, 

About me leap'd and laugh'd 
The modish Cupid of the day, 

And shrill'd his tinsel shaft. 

' I swear (and else may insects prick 

Each leaf into a gall !) 70 

This girl, for whom your heart is sick. 

Is three times worth them all ; 

' For those and theirs, by Nature's law, 

Have faded long ago ; 
But in these latter springs I saw 

Your own Olivia blow, 

* From when she gamboll'd on the greens, 

A baby-germ, to when 
The maiden blossoms of her teens 

Could number five from ten. 80 

^ I swear, by leaf, and wind, and rain 

(And hear me with thine ears), 
That, tho' I circle in the grain 

Five hundred rings of years — 

* Yet, since I first could cast a shade, 

Did never creature pass 
So slightly, musically made. 
So light upon the grass : 



S6 ■ THE TALKING OAK. 

* For as to fairies, that will flit 

To make the greensward fresh, 90 

I hold them exquisitely knit, 
But far too spare of flesh.' 

O, hide thy knotted knees in fern, 

And overlook the chace ; 
And from thy topmost branch discern 

The roofs of Sumner-place. 

But thou, whereon I carved her name, 

That oft hast heard my vows, 
Declare when last Olivia came 

To sport beneath thy boughs. 100 

' O yesterday, you know, the fair 

Was holden at the town \ 
Her father left his good arm-chair. 

And rode his hunter down. 

* And with him Albert came on his, 

I look'd at him with joy ; 
As cowslip unto oxlip is, • 

So seems she to the boy. 

' An hour had past — and, sitting straight 

Within the low-wheel'd chaise, no 

Her mother trundled to the gate 
Behind the dappled grays. 

* But, as for her, she stayed at home, 

And on the roof she went, 
And down the way you use to come 
She look'd with discontent. 



THE TALKING OAK. «7 

' She left the novel half-uncut 

Upon the rosewood shelf; 
She left the new piano shut : 

She could not please herself. 120 

' Then ran she, gamesome as the colt, 

And livelier than a lark 
She sent her voice thro' all the holt 

Before her, and the park. 

* A light wind chased her on the wing, 

And in the chase grew wild ; 
As close as might be would he cling 
About the darling child : 

' But light as any wind that blows 

So fleetly did she stir, 130 

The flower she touch'd on dipt and rose, 

And turn'd to look at her. 

* And here she came, and round me play'd, 

And sang to me the whole 
Of those three stanzas that you made 
About my " giant bole ; " 

' And in a fit of frolic mirth 

She strove to span my waist j 
Alas, I was so broad of girth, 

I could not be embraced ! 140 

' I wish'd myself the fair young beech 

That here beside me stands. 
That round me, clasping each in each, 

She might have lock'd her hands. 



THE TALKING OAK. 

* Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet 

As woodbine's fragile hold, 
Or when I feel about my feet 
The berried briony fold.' 

O muffle round thy knees with fern, 

And shadow Sumner-chace ! 150 

Long may thy topmost branch discern 

The roofs of Sumner-place ! 

But tell me, did she read the name 

I carved with many vows 
When last with throbbing heart I came 

To rest beneath thy boughs ? 

* O yes, she wander'd round and round 

These knotted knees of mine, 
And found, and kiss'd the name she found, 

And sweetly murmur'd thine. 160 

* A teardrop trembled from its source, 

And down my surface crept. 
My sense of touch is something coarse, 
But I believe she wept. 

'Then flush'd her cheek with rosy light. 

She glanced across the plain ; 
But not a creature was in sight ; 

She kiss'd me once again. 

' Her kisses were so close and kind, 

That, trust me on my word, 170 

Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind. 

But yet my sap was stirr'd ; 



THE TALKING OAK. 89 

*And even into my inmost ring 

A pleasure I discern'd, 
Like those blind motions of the Spring 

That show the year is tum'd. 

* Thrice^happy he that may caress 

The ringlet's waving balm — 
The cushions of whose touch may press 

The maiden's tender palm. 180 

' I, rooted here among the groves, 

But languidly adjust 
My vapid vegetable loves 

With anthers and with dust ; 

* For ah ! my friend, the days were brief 

Whereof the poets talk, 
When that which breathes within the leaf 
Could slip its bark and walk. 

* But could I, as in times foregone, 

From spray and branch and stem, 190 

Have suck'd and gather'd into one 
The life that spreads in them, 

' She had not found me so remiss ; 

But lightly issuing thro', 
I would have paid her kiss for kiss 

With usury thereto.' 

O flourish high, with leafy towers. 

And overlook the lea ; 
Pursue thy loves among the bowers, 

But leave thou mine to me. 200 



90 THE TALKING OAK. 

O flourish, hidden deep in fern, 
Old oak, I love thee well ; 

A thousand thanks for what I learn 
And what remains to tell. 

' 'T is little more : the day was wami; 

At last, tired out with play. 
She sank her head upon her arm, 

And at my feet she lay. 

' Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves, 

I breathed upon her eyes 
Thro' all the summer of my leaves 

A welcome mix'd with sighs. 

* I took the swarming sound of life — 

The music from the town — 
The murmurs of the drum and fife, 
And lull'd them in my own. 

* Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip, 

To light her shaded eye ; 
A second flutter'd round her lip 
Like a golden butterfly ; 

' A third would glimmer on her neck 
To make the necklace shine \ 

Another slid, a sunny fleck, 
From head to ankle fine. 

* Then close and dark my arms I spread, 

And shadow'd all her rest — 
Dropt dews upon her golden head. 
An acorn in her breast. 



THE TALKING OAK. 9 1 

*But in a pet she started up, 

And pluck'd it out, and drew 330 

My little oakling from the cup, 

And flung him in the dew. 

* And yet it was a graceful gift — 

I felt a pang within 
As when I see the woodman lift 
His axe to slay my kin. 

* I shook him down because he was 

The finest on the tree. 
He lies beside thee on the grass. 

O kiss him once for me ! 240 

* O kiss him twice and thrice for me, 

That have no lips to kiss, 
For never yet was oak on lea 
Shall grow so fair as this ! ' 

Step deeper yet in herb and fern, 

Look further thro' the chace, 
Spread upward till thy boughs discern 

The front of Sumner-place. 

This fruit of thine by Love is blest, 

That but a moment lay 250 

Where fairer fruit of Love may rest 

Some happy future day. 

I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice ; 

The warmth it thence shall win 
To riper hfe may magnetize 

The baby-oak within. 



92 THE TALKING OAK. 

But thou, while kingdoms overset 

Or lapse from hand to hand, 
Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet 

Thine acorn in the land. 260 

May never saw dismember thee, 

Nor wielded axe disjoint ; 
That art the fairest-spoken tree 

From here to Lizard-point. 

O rock upon thy towery top 

All throats that gurgle sweet ! 
All starry culmination drop 

Balm-dews to bathe thy feet ! 

All grass of silky feather grow — 

And while he sinks or swells 270 

The full south-breeze around thee blow 

The sound of minster bells ! 

The fat earth feed thy branchy root, 

That under deeply strikes ! 
The northern morning o'er thee shoot, 

High up, in silver spikes ! 

Nor ever lightning char thy grain, 

But, rolling as in sleep. 
Low thunders bring the mellow rain. 

That makes thee broad and deep ! 2S0 

And hear me swear a solemn oath, 

That only by thy side 
Will I to Olive plight my troth. 

And gain her for my bride. 



THE TALKING OAK. 



93 




And when my marriage morn may fall, 
She, Dryad-like, shall wear 

Alternate leaf and acorn-ball 
In wreath about her hair. 



And I will work in prose and rhyme, 
And praise thee more in both 

Than bard has honor'd beech or lime, 
Or that Thessalian growth. 



94 



UL YSSES. 



In which the swarthy ringdove sat, 
And mystic sentence spoke ; 

And more than England honors that, 
Thy famous brother-oak, 

Wherein the younger Charles abode 
Till all the paths were dim, 

And far below the Roundhead rode, 
And humm'd a surly hymn. 




ULYSSES. 



It little profits that an idle king, 

By this still hearth, among these barren crags. 

Match' d with an aged wife, I mete and dole 

Unequal laws unto a savage race. 

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. 

I cannot rest from travel ; I will drink 

Life to the lees : all times I have enjoy'd 

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those 



UL YSSES. 95 

That loved me, and alone ; on shore, and when 

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades lo 

Vext the dim sea. I am become a name ; 

For always roaming with a hungry heart 

Much have I seen and known — cities of men 

And manners, climates, councils, governments. 

Myself not least, but honor'd of them all — 

And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 

I am a part of all that I have met ; 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades 20 

Forever and forever when I move. 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end. 

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use ! 

As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life 

Were all too little, and of one to me 

Little remains : but every hour is saved 

From that eternal silence, something more, 

A bringer of new things ; and vile it were 

For some three suns to store and hoard myself. 

And this gray spirit yearning in desire 30 

To follow knowledge like a sinking star. 

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, 
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -^ 
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil 
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild 
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees 
Subdue them to the useful and the good. 
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere 
Of common duties, decent not to fail 40 

In offices of tenderness, and pay 
Meet adoration to my household gods. 
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. 



96 VL YSSES. 

There lies the port : the vessel puffs her sail : 
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, 
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me — 
That ever with a frolic welcome took 
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed 
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old ; 
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil ; so 

Death closes all : but something ere the end, 
Some work of noble note, may yet be done, 
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. 
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks ; 
The long day wanes ; the slow moon climbs ; the deep 
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 
'T is not too late to seek a newer world. 
Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 60 

Of all the western stars, until I die. 
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ; 
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 
Tho' much is taken, much abides ; and tho' 
We are not now that strength which in old days 
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are ; 
One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 70 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 



97 




LOCKSLEY HALL. 

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn ; 
Leave me here, and when you want me sound upon the bugle 
horn. 

'T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, 
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall ; 



Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts. 
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. 

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest. 
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. 

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, 
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. lo 

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime 
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time ; 

7 



93 LOCKS LEY HALL. 

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed ; 
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed : 

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see ; 
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would 
be.— 

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast ; 
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest ; 

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove ; 
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts 
of love. 20 

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one 

so young, 
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. 

And I said, ' My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to 

me ; 
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.' 

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light. 
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. 

And she turn'd — her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of- 

sighs — 
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes — 

Saying, 'I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me 

wrong ; ' 
Saying, ' Dost thou love me, cousin ? ' weeping, ' I liave loved 

thee long.' 30 



LOCKS LEY HAL.L. 99 

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing 

hands ; 
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords 

with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, past in music out of 

sight. 

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring. 
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the 
Spring. 

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, 
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips. 

O my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more ! 
O the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren 
shore ! 40 

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, 
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue ! 

Is it well to wish thee happy? — having known me — to decline 
' On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine ! 

Yet it shall be ; thou shalt lower to his level day by day. 
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with 
clay. 

As the husband is, the wife is ; thou art mated with a clown. 
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee 
down. 



lOO LOCKSLEY HALL. 

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel 

force, 
Something better than his dog, a litde dearer than his horse. 50 

What is this ? his eyes are heavy : think not they are glazed 

with wine. 
Go to him ; it is thy duty : kiss him ; take his hand in thine. 

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought ; 
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter 
thought. 

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand — 
Better thou wert dead before me, tho* I slew thee with my 
hand ! 

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, 
Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace. 

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of I 

youth ! 
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth ! 60 

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule ! 
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the 
fool! 

Well — 't is well that I should bluster ! — Hadst thou less un-' 

worthy proved — 
Would to God — for I had loved thee more than ever wife 
was loved. 

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter 

fruit? 
I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root. 



LOCKSLEY HALL. lOi 

« 
Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should 

come 
As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery 
home. 

Where is comfort ? in division of the records of the mind ? 
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, 
kind ? 70 

I remember one that perish'd; sweedy did she speak and 

move : 
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love. 

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she 

bore? 
No — she never loved me truly ; love is love forevermore. 

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils ! this is truth the poet 

sings, 
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier 

things. 

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to 

proof. 
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof. 

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the 

wall, 
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and 

fall. 80 

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken 

sleep, 
To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt 

weep. 



I02 LOCKSLEY HALL. 

Thou shalt hear the ' Never, never,' whisper'd by the phantom 

years, 
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears ; 

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy 

pain. 
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow ; get thee to thy rest again. 

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace ; for a tender voice will 

cry. 
'T is a purer life than thine ; a lip to drain thy trouble dry. 

Baby lips will laugh me down ; my latest rival brings thee rest. 

Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's 

breast. go 

O, the child too clothes the father with a deamess not his due. 
Half is thine and half is his ; it will be worthy of the two. 

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, 
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's 
heart. 

' They were dangerous guides the feelings — she herself was 

not exempt — 
Truly, she herself had suffer'd ' — Perish in thy self-contempt ! 

Overlive it — lower yet — be happy ! wherefore should I care? 
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair. 

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like 

these ? 
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden 

keys. loo 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 103 

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow. 
I have but an angry fancy : what is that which I should do ? 

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, 
When the ranks are roU'd in vapor, and the winds are laid 
with sound. 

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels, 
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels. 

Can I but relive in sadness ? I will turn that earlier page. 
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother- 
Age ! 

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife. 
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my 
life ; no 

Yearning for the large excitement that the commg years would 

yield. 
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field. 

And at night along the dusky highway, near and nearer drawn, 
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn ; 

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then. 
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of 
men; 

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something 

new. 
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they 

shall do : 



I04 LOCKS LEY HALL. 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would 
be ; I20 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails. 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; : 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly 

dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ; , 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing ; 
warm, I 

With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder- 
storm ; 

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were : 

furl'd 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in 

awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. 130 

So I triumph'd, ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry, 
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced 
eye; 

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint ; 
Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to 
point ; 

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, 
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. 



LOCKSLEY HALL, 1 05 

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the 
suns. 

What is that to him that re'aps not harvest of his youthful joys, 
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat forever Hke a boy's ? 140 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the 

shore, 
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden 

breast, 
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest. 

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle- 
horn. 

They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their 
scorn : 

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd 

string? 
I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a 

thing. 

Weakness to be wroth with weakness ! woman's pleasure, 

woman's pain — 

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower 

brain : 150 

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with 

mine, 
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine — 



I06 LOCKSLEY HALL. 

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some 

retreat 
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my Hfe began to beat ; 

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd ; — 
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward. 

Or to burst all links of habit — there to wander far away, 
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day. 

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, 

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of 

Paradise. »6o 

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, 
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from 
the crag ; 

Droops the heavy-blossom 'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited 

tree — 
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. 

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march 

of mind, 
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake 

mankind. 

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and 

breathing-space : 
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. 

Jron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run. 

Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the 

sun ; ^^° 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 107 

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the 

brooks, 
Not with Winded eyesight poring over miserable books — 

Fool, again the dream, the fancy ! but I know my words are 

wild. 
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. 

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, 
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower 
pains ! 

Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or clime ? 
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time — • 

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, 
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in 
Ajalon ! 180 

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us 

range. 
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of 

change. 

rhro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day : 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 

m 

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun ; 
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh 
the sun — 

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. 
Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet. 



Io8 THE TWO VOICES. 

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall ! 
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree 
fall. 190 

Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath andj 

holt, 
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. 

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow ; 
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. 



THE TWO VOICES. 

A STILL small voice spake unto me, 

* Thou art so full of misery, 
Were it not better not to be ? ' 

Then to the still small voice I said : 
' Let me not cast in endless shade 
What is so wonderfully made.' 

To which the voice did urge reply : 

* To-day I saw the dragon-fly 

Come from the wells where he did lie. 

* An inner impulse rent the veil 
Of his old husk ; from head to tail 
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 

' He dried his wings ; like gauze they grew 
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew 
A living flash of hght he flew.' 



THE TWO VOICES. 109 

I said, ' When first the world began, 
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran, 
And in the sixth she moulded man. 

' She gave him mind, the lordliest 

Proportion, and, above the rest, 20 

Dominion in the head and breast.' 

Thereto the silent voice replied : 
*■ Self-blinded are you by your pride : 
Look up thro' night : the world is wide. 

* This truth within thy mind rehearse, 
That in a boundless universe 

Is boundless better, boundless worse. 

' Think you this mould of hopes and fears 

Could find no statelier than his peers 

In yonder hundred million spheres ? ' 30 

It spake, moreover, in my mind : 

' Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind, 

Yet is there plenty of the kind.' 

Then did my response clearer fall : 
' No compound of this earthly ball 
Is like another, all in all.' 

To which he answer'd scofifingly : 
' Good soul ! suppose I grant it thee, 
Who '11 weep for thy deficiency ? 

* Or will one beam be less intense, 40 
When thy peculiar difference 

Is cancell'd in the world of sense ? ' 



no THE TWO VOICES. 

I would have said, ' Thou canst not know,' 
But my full heart, that work'd below, 
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow. 

Again the voice spake unto me : 
*Thou art so steep'd in misery, 
Surely, 't were better not to be. 

' Thine anguish will not let thee sleep. 

Nor any train of reason keep ; 

Thou canst not think but thou wilt weep.' 

I said, ' The years with change advance ; 
If I make dark my countenance, 
I shut my life from happier chance. 

' Some turn this sickness yet might take, 
Even yet' But he : ' What drug can make 
A wither'd palsy cease to shake ? ' 

I wept, ' Tho' I should die, I know 
That all about the thorn will blow 
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow ; 

^ And men, thro' novel spheres of thought 
Still moving after truth long sought. 
Will learn new things when I am not.' 

' Yet,' said the secret voice, ' some time 
Sooner or later, will gray prime 
Make thy grass hoar with early rime. 

' Not less swift souls that yearn for light, 

Rapt after heaven's starry flight, 

Would sweep the tracts of day and night. 



THE TWO VOICES. HI 

* Not less the bee would range her cells, 70 

The furzy prickle fire the dells, 
The foxglove cluster dappled bells.' 

I said that ' all the years invent ; 
Each month is various to present 
The world with some development. 

' Were this not well, to bide mine hour, 
Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower 
How grows the day of human power ? ' 

*The highest-mounted mind,' he said, 

' Still sees the sacred morning spread 80 

The silent summit overhead. 

' Will thirty seasons render plain 
Those lonely lights that still remain, 
Just breaking over land and main ? 

'Or make that morn, from his cold crown 
And crystal silence creeping down. 
Flood with full daylight glebe and town ? 

' Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let 

Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set 

In midst of knowledge dream'd not yet. 90 

' Thou hast not gained a real height. 
Nor art thou nearer to the light, 
Because the scale is infinite. 

' 'Twere better not to breathe or speak, 
Than cry for strength, remaining weak, 
And seem to find, but still to seek. 



112 THE TWO VOICES. 

' Moreover, but to seem to find 

Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd, 

A healthy firame, a quiet mind.' 

I said, ^ When I am gone away, 

*' He dared not tarry," men will say, 

Doing dishonor to my clay.' 

*This is more vile,' he made reply, 

' To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh, 

Than once fi-om dread of pain to die. 

' Sick art thou — a divided will 
Still heaping on the fear of ill 
The fear of men, a coward still. 

* Do men love thee ? Art thou so bound 
To men, that how thy name may sound 
Will vex thee lying underground? 

' The memory of the wither'd leaf 
In endless time is scarce more brief 
Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf. 

* Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust ; 
The right ear that is fill'd with dust 
Hears little of the false or just.' 

* Hard task, to pluck resolve,' I cried, 

* From emptiness and the waste wide 
Of that abyss, or scornful pride ! 

* Nay — rather yet that I could raise 
One hope that warm'd me in the days 
While still I yearn'd for human praise. 



THE TWO VOICES. 113 

* When, wide in soul and bold of tongue, 
Among the tents I paused and sung, 
The distant batde flash 'd and rung. 

' I sung the joyful Paean clear, 

And, sitting, burnish'd without fear 

The brand, the buckler, and the spear — 

' Waidng to strive a happy strife, 13° 

To war with falsehood to the knife. 
And not to lose the good of Hfe — 

' Some hidden principle to move. 

To put together, part and prove. 

And mete the bounds of hate and love — 

' As far as might be, to carve out 
Free space for every human doubt, 
That the whole mind might orb about — 

' To search thro' all I felt or saw, 

The springs of life, the depths of awe, 140 

And reach the law within the law : 

* At least, not rotting like a weed, 
But, having sown some generous seed. 
Fruitful of further thought and deed, 

' To pass, when Life her light withdraws. 
Not void of righteous self-applause. 
Nor in a merely selfish cause — 

' In some good cause, not in mine own, 
To perish, wept for, honor'd, known, 
And like a warrior overthrown j 150 

8 



114 THE TWO VOICES. 

' Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears, 
When, soil'd with noble dust, he hears 
His country's war-song thrill his ears : 

* Then dying of a mortal stroke, 
What time the foeman's line is broke, 
And all the war is roll'd in smoke.' 

'Yea ! ' said the voice, ' thy dream wasgood, 
While thou abodest in the bud. 
It was the stirring of the blood. 

^ If Nature put not forth her power ifo 

About the opening of the flower. 
Who is it that could live an hour? 

'Then comes the check, the change, the fall. 
Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. 
There is one remedy for all. 
• 

'Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain, 
Link'd month to month with such a chain 
Of knitted purport, all were vain. 

' Thou hadst not between death and birth 
Dissolved the riddle of the earth. 170 

So were thy labor litde-worth. 

' That men with knowledge merely play'd, 
I told thee — hardly nigher made, 
Tho' scaling slow from grade to grade ; 

' Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind. 
Named man, may hope some truth to find 
That bears relation to the mind. 



THE TWO VOICES. 115 

* For every worm beneath the moon 
Draws different threads, and late and soon 

Spins, toiling out his own cocoon. 180 

' Cry, faint not : either Truth is bom 
Beyond the polar gleam forlorn. 
Or in the gateways of the morn. 

' Cry, faint not, climb : the summits slope 
Beyond the furthest flights of hope. 
Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope. 

* Sometimes a little corner shines. 
As over rainy mist inclines 

A gleaming crag with belts of pines. 

' I will go forward, sayest thou, ,90 

I shall not fail to find her now. 
Look up, the fold is on her brow. 

* If straight thy tract, or if oblique, 

Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost strike, 
Embracing cloud, Ixion-like ; 

*And owning but a little more 
Than beasts, abidest lame and poor, 
Calling thyself a little lower 

' Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl ! 

Why inch by inch to darkness crawl ? 200 

There is one remedy for all.' 

'O dull, one-sided voice,' said I, 
' Wilt thou make everything a lie, 
To flatter me that I may die ? 



Il6 THE TWO VOICES. 

' I know that age to age succeeds, 
Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, 
A dust of systems and of creeds. 

' I cannot hide that some have striven, 

Achieving calm, to whom was given 

The joy that mixes man with Heaven : : 

' Who, rowing hard against tlie stream. 
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, 
And did not dream it was a dream ; 

' But heard, by secret transport led, 
Even in the charnels of the dead, 
The murmur of the fountain-head — 

' Which did accomplish their desire, 
Bore and forbore, and did not tire. 
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire. 

* He heeded not reviling tones, 2 

Nor sold his heart to idle moans, 

Tho' curs'd and scorn'd, and bruised with stones ; 

' But looking upward, full of grace. 
He pray'd, and from a happy place 
God's glory smote him on the face.' 

The sullen answer slid betwixt : 

' Not that the grounds of hope were fixt. 

The elements were kindlier mixt.' 

I said, * I toil beneath the curse. 

But, knowing not the universe, ■ 2 

I fear to slide from bad to worse ; 



THE TWO VOICES. 117 

* And that, in seeking to undo 
One riddle, and to find the true, 
I knit a hundred others new ; 

* Or that this anguish fleeting hence, 
Unmanacled from bonds of sense. 
Be fixt and frozen to permanence : 

* For I go, weak from suffering here ; 
Naked I go, and void of cheer : 

What is it that I may not fear ? ' 240 

* Consider well,' the voice replied, 

' His face, that two hours since hath died ; 
Wilt thou find passion, pain, or pride ? 

* Will he obey when one commands ? 
Or answer should one press his hands ? 
He answers not, nor understands. 

* His palms are folded on his breast : 
There is no other thing exprest 

But long disquiet merged in rest. 

* His lips are very mild and meek : 250 
Tho' one should smite him on the cheek. 

And on the mouth, he will not speak. 

* His little daughter, whose sweet face 
He kiss'd, taking his last embrace, 
Becomes dishonor to her race — 

* His sons grow up that bear his name, 
Some grow to honor, some to shame, — 
But he is chill to praise or blame. 



Il8 THE TWO VOICES. 

' He will not hear the north-wind rave, 
Nor, moaning, household shelter crave 
From winter rains that beat his grave. 

' High up the vapors fold and swim ; 
About him broods the twilight dim ; 
The place he knew forgetteth him.' 

' If all be dark, vague voice,' I said, 

* These things are wrapt in doubt and dread, 
Nor canst thou show the dead are dead. 

* The sap dries up ; the plant declines. 
A deeper tale my heart divines. 
Know I not Death ? the outward signs ? 27^ 

* I found him when my years were few ; 
A shadow on the graves I knew. 
And darkness in the village yew. 

' From grave to grave the shadow crept ; 
In her still place the morning wept ; 
Touch'd by his feet the daisy slept. 

* The simple senses crown'd his head : 
^' Omega ! thou art Lord," they said, 
" We find no motion in the dead." 

' Why, if man rot in dreamless ease, 281 

Should that plain fact, as taught by these, 
Not make him sure that he shall cease ? 

* Who forged that other influence. 
That heat of inward evidence. 
By which he doubts against the sense? 



THE TWO VOICES. 119 

' He owns the fatal gift of eyes, 
That read his spirit blindly wise, 
Not simple as a thing that dies. 

' Here sits he shaping wings to fly ; 

His heart forebodes a mystery ; 290 

He names the name Eternity. 

* That type of Perfect in his mind 
In Nature can he nowhere find. 
He sows himself on every wind. 

* He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, 
And thro' thick veils to apprehend 

A labor working to an end. 

* The end and the beginning vex 
His reason ; many things perplex. 

With motions, checks, and counter- checks. 30c 

* He knows a baseness in his blood 

At such strange war with something good. 
He may not do the thing he would. 

' Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn, 
Vast images in glimmering dawn, 
Half-shown, are broken and withdrawn. 

* Ah ! sure within him and without. 
Could his dark wisdom find it out. 
There must be answer to his doubt. 

* But thou canst answer not again. 310 
With thine own weapon art thou slain. 

Or thou wilt answer but in vain. 



I20 THE TWO VOICES. 

' The doubt would rest, I dare not solve. 
In the same circle we revolve. 
Assurance only breeds resolve.' 

As when a billow, blown against, 

Falls back, the voice with which I fenced 

A little ceased, but recommenced : 

' Where wert thou when thy father play'd 
In his free field, and pastime made, 
A merry boy in sun and shade ? 

* A merry boy they called him then. 
He sat upon the knees of men 

In days that never come again. 

* Before the little ducts began 

To feed thy bones with lime, and ran 
Their course, till thou wert also man : 

'Who took a wife, who rear'd his race, 
Whose wrinkles gather'd on his face, 
Whose troubles number with his days ; 

* A life of nothings, nothing-worth. 
From that first nothing ere his birth 
To that last nothing under earth ! ' 

'These words/ I said, 'are like the rest; 
No certain clearness, but at best 
A vague suspicion of the breast : 

* But if I grant, thou might'st defend 
The thesis which thy words intend — 
That to begin implies to end ; 



THE TWO VOICES. I2i 

* Yet how should I for certain hold, 34° 

Because my memory is so cold, 
That I first was in human mould ? 

^ I cannot make this matter plain, 
But I would shoot, howe'er in vain, 
A random arrow from the brain. 

' It may be that no hfe is found, 
Which only to one engine bound 
Falls off, but cycles always round. 

^ As old mythologies relate, 

Some draught of Lethe might await 35° 

The sHpping thro' from state to state j 

' As here we find in trances, men 
Forget the dream that happens then. 
Until they fall in trance again : 

' So might we, if our state were such 

As one before, remember much, 

For those two likes might meet and touch. 

'■ But, if I lapsed from nobler place, 

Some legend of a fallen race 

Alone might hint of my disgrace j 360 

' Some vague emotion of delight 

In gazing up an Alpine height, 

Some yearning toward the lamps of night. 

' Or if thro' lower li\^es I came — 
Tho' all experience past became 
Consolidate in mind and frame — 



122 THE TWO VOICES. 

* I might forget my weaker lot ; 
For is not our first year forgot ? 
The haunts" of memory echo not. 

* And men, whose reason long was blind, 370 
From cells of madness unconfined. 

Oft lose whole years of darker mind. 

'■ Much more, if first I floated free, 
• As naked essence, must I be 
Incompetent of memory ; 

' For memory dealing but with time, 
And he with matter, could she climb 
Beyond her own material prime ? 

* Moreover, something is or seems. 

That touches me with mystic gleams, i^o 

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams — 

* Of something felt, like something here ; 
Of something done, I know not where ; 
Such as no language may declare.' 

The still voice laugh'd. ' I talk,' said he, 
' Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee 
Thy pain is a reality.' 

'■ But thou,' said I, ' hast miss'd thy mark. 

Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark, 

By making all the horizon dark. 390 

* Why not set forth, if I should do 
This rashness, that which might ensue 
With this old soul in organs new ? 



THE TWO VOICES. 123 

' Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 

No life that breathes with human breath 

Has ever truly long'd for death. 

' 'T is life whereof our nerves are scant, 

Hfe, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want.' 

1 ceased, and sat as one forlorn. 400 
Then said the voice, in quiet scorn : 

'Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.' 

And I arose, and I released 

The casement, and the light increased 

With freshness in the dawning east. 

Like soften'd airs that blowing steal. 
When meres begin to uncongeal, 
The sweet church bells began to peal. 

On to God's house the people prest : 

Passing the place where each must rest, 410 

Each enter'd like a welcome guest. 

One walk'd between his wife and child, 
With measur'd footfall firm and mild, 
And now and then he gravely smiled. 

The prudent partner of his blood 

Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good. 

Wearing the rose of womanhood. * 

And in their double love secure. 

The little maiden walk'd demure. 

Pacing with downward eyelids pure. ^>3o 



124 



THE TWO VOICES, 




These three made unity so sweet, 
My frozen heart began to beat, 
Remembering its ancient heat. 



I blest them, and they wander'd on : 
I spoke, but answer came there none ; 
The dull and bitter voice was gone. 



THE TWO VOICES. 1 25 

A second voice was at mine ear, 

A little whisper silver-clear, 

A murmur, ' Be of better cheer.' 

As from some blissful neighborhood, 430 

A notice faintly understood, 

* I see the end, and know the good. 

A little hint to solace woe, 

A hint, a whisper breathing low, 

* I may not speak of what I know.' 

Like an ^Eolian harp that wakes 

No certain air, but overtakes 

Far thought with music that it makes : 

Such seem'd the whisper at my side : 

' What is it thou knowest, sweet voice ? ' I cried. 4(0 

' A hidden hope,' the voice replied ; 

So heavenly-toned, that in that hour 
From out my sullen heart a power 
Broke, hke the rainbow from the shower. 

To feel, altho' no tongue can prove, 
That every cloud, that spreads above 
And veileth love, itself is love. 

And forth into the fields I went. 
And Nature's living motion lent 
The pulse of hope to discontent. 450 

I wonder'd at the bounteous hours. 

The slow result of winter-showers : 

You scarce could see the grass for flowers. 



126 ST. A GATES' EVE. 

I wonder'd, while I paced along : 
The woods were fiU'd so full with song, 
There seem'd no room for sense of wrong ; 

And all so variously wrought, 

I marvell'd how the mind was brought 

To anchor by one gloomy thought ; 

And wherefore rather I made choice * 460 

To commune with that barren voice, 
Than him that said, ' Rejoice ! rejoice ! ' 



ST. AGNES' EVE. 

Deep on the convent-roof the snows 

Are sparkling to the moon : 
My breath to heaven like vapor goes ; 

May my soul follow soon ! 
The shadows of the convent-towers 

Slant down the snowy sward, 
Still creeping with the creeping hours 

That lead me to my Lord : 
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear 

As are the frosty skies, 
Or this first snowdrop of the year 

That in my bosom lies. 

As these white robes are soil'd and dark, 

To yonder shining ground ; 
As this pale taper's earthly spark, 

To yonder argent round ; 
So shows my soul before the Lamb, 

My spirit before Thee \ 



ST. AGNES' EVE. 



127 




So in mine earthly house I am, 

To that I hope to be. 
Break up the heavens, O Lord ! and far, 

Thro' all yon starhght keen, 
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, 

In raiment white and clean. 



128 SIR GALAHAD. 

He lifts me to the golden doors : 

The flashes come and go ; 
All heaven bursts her starry floors, 

And strews her lights below, 
And deepens on and up ! the gates 

Roll back, and far within 30 

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, 

To make me pure of sin. 
The sabbaths of Eternity, 

One sabbath deep and wide — 
A light upon the shining sea — 

The Bridegroom with his bride ! 



SIR GALAHAD. 

My good blade can-es the casques of men, 

My tough lance thrusteth sure. 
My strength is as the strength of ten. 

Because my heart is pure. 
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, 

The hard brands shiver on the steel, 
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, 

The horse and rider reel ; 
They reel, they roll in clanging lists. 

And when the tide of combat stands, 
Perfume and flowers fall in showers, 

That lightly rain from ladies' hands. 

How sweet are looks that ladies bend 

On whom their favors fall ! 
For them I battle to the end. 

To save from shame and thrall : 



SIR GALAHAD. 



129 




But all my heart is drawn above, 

My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine ; 
I never felt the kiss of love, 

Nor maiden's hand in mine. 
More bounteous aspects on me beam, 

Me mightier transports move and thrill ; 
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer 

A virgin heart in work and will. 
9 



130 SIR GALAHAD. 

When down the stormy crescent goes, 

A Hght before me swims, 
Between dark stems the forest glows, 

I hear a noise of hymns : 
Then by some secret shrine I ride ; 

I hear a voice, but none are there ; 30 

The stalls are void, the doors are wide, 

The tapers burning fair. 
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth. 

The silver vessels sparkle clean, 
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, 

And solemn chants resound between. 



Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres 

I find a magic bark ; 
I leap on board : no helmsman steers : 

I float till all is dark. 
A gentle sound, an awful light ! 

Three angels bear the Holy Grail : 
With folded feet, in stoles of white. 

On sleeping wings they sail. 
Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God ! 

My spirit beats her mortal bars. 
As down dark tides the glory slides, 

And starlike mingles with the stars. 

When on my goodly charger borne 

Thro' dreaming towns I go, 
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn. 

The streets are dumb with snow. 
The tempest crackles on the leads, 

And, ringing, spins from brand and mail ; 
But o'er the dark a glory spreads. 

And gilds the driving hail. 



SIR GALAHAD. IS^ 

I leave the plain, I climb the height ; 

No branchy thicket shelter yields : 
But blessed forms in whistling storms 

Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. 60 

A maiden knight — to me is given 

Such hope, I know not fear ; 
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven 

That often meet me here. 
I muse on joy that will not cease, 

Pure spaces clothed in living beams. 
Pure lilies of eternal peace, 

Whose odors haunt my dreams ; 
And, stricken by an angel's hand, 

This mortal armor that I wear, 7° 

This weight and size, this heart and eyes, 

Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air. 

The clouds are broken in the sky, 

And thro' the mountain-walls 
A rolling organ-harmony 

Swells up, and shakes and falls. 
Then move the trees, the copses nod, 

Wings flutter, voices hover clear : 
* O just and faithful knight of God ! 

Ride on ! the prize is near.' 80 

So pass I hostel, hall, and grange ; 

By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 
All-arm'd I ride, vvhate'er betide, 

Until I find the Holy Grail. 



132 



THE BROOK. 




THE BROOK; 

AN IDYL. 

* Here, by this brook, we parted ; I to the East 
And he for Italy — too late — too late : 
One whom the strong sons of the world despise ; 
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share, 
And mellow metres more than cent for cent ; 



THE BROOK. 133 

Nor could he understand how money breeds, 
Thought it a dead thing ; yet himself could make 
The thing that is not as the thing that is. 

had he lived ! In our schoolbooks we say, 

Of those that held their heads above the crowd, lo 

They flourish'd then or then ; but life in him 

Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch 'd 

On such a time as goes before the leaf. 

When all the wood stands in a mist of green, 

And nothing perfect : yet the brook he loved. 

For which, in branding summers of Bengal, 

Or even the sweet half- English Neilgherry air, 

1 panted, seems, as I re-listen to it. 
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy 

To me that loved him ; for " O brook," he says, 20 

" O babbling brook," says Edmund in his rhyme, 

" Whence come you? " and the brook, why not? replies ; 

I come from haunts of coot and hern, 

I make a sudden sally 
And sparkle out among the fern, 

To bicker down a valley. 

By thirty hills I hurry down, 

Or slip between the ridges, 
By twenty thorps, a little town. 

And half a hundred bridges. 30 

Till last by Philip's farm I flow 

To join the brimming river, 
For men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 

*■ Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out, 
Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge. 
It has more ivy ; there the river ; and there 
Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet. 



134 THE BROOK. 

I chatter over stony ways, 

In little sharps and trebles, 40 

I bubble into eddying bays, 

I babble on the pebbles. 

With many a curve my banks I fret 

By many a field and fallow. 
And many a fairy foreland set 

With willow-weed and mallow. 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow 

To join the brimming river, 
For men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 50 

' But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird ; 
Old Philip ; all about the fields you caught 
His weary daylong chirping, like the dry 
High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass. 

I wind about, and in and out. 

With here a blossom sailing, 
And here and there a lusty trout. 

And here and there a grayling, 

And here and there a foamy flake 

Upon me, as I travel, 60 

With many a silver waterbreak 

Above the golden gravel. 

And draw them all along, and flow 

To join the brimming river, 
For men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 

'■ O darling Katie Willows, his one child ! 
A maiden of our century, yet most meek ; 
A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse ; 



THE BROOK. 135 

Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand ; 70 

Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair 

In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell 

Divides threefold to show the fruit within. 

' Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn. 
Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed, 
James Willows, of one name and heart with her. 
For here I came, twenty years back, — the week 
Before I parted with poor Edmund ; crost 
By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, 
Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam 80 

Beyond it, where the waters marry — crost, 
Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon, 
And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate. 
Half- parted from a weak and scolding hinge, 
Stuck ; and he clamor 'd from a casement, '*' Run," 
To Katie somewhere in the walks below, 
"Run, Katie ! " Katie never ran : she moved 
To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers, 
A little flutter'd with her eyelids down. 
Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon. 90 

'What was it? Less of sentiment than sense 
Had Katie ; not illiterate ; neither one 
Who babbling in the fount of Active tears. 
And nursed by mealy-mouthed philanthropies, 
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed. 

' She told me. She and James had quarrell'd. Why ? 
What cause of quarrel ? None, she said, no cause ; 
James had no cause : but when I prest the cause, 
I learnt that James had flickering jealousies 
Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James ? I said. 100 
But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine. 



136 THE BROOK. 

And sketching with her slender-pointed foot 

Some figure Hke a wizard pentagram 

On garden gravel, let my query pass 

Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd 

If James were coming. " Coming every day," 

She answer'd, '' ever longing to explain, 

But evermore her father came across 

With some long-winded tale, and broke him short ; 

And James departed vext with him and her." no 

How could I help her? *' Would I — was it wrong? " 

(Claspt hands and tliat petitionary grace 

Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke) 

" O would I take her father for one hour, 

For one half-hour, and let him talk to me ! " 

And even while she spoke, I saw where James 

Made towards us, like a wader in the surf. 

Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet. 

^ O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake ! 
For in I went and call'd old Philip out 120 

To show the farm : full willingly he rose ; 
He led me thro' the short sweet-smelling lanes 
Of his wheat suburb, babbling as he went. 
He prais'd his land, his horses, his machines ; 
He prais'd his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs ; 
He prais'd his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens ; 
His pigeons, who in session on their roofs 
Approved him, bowing at their own deserts : 
Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took 
Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each, 130 

And naming those, his friends, for whom they were : 
Then crost the common into Darnley chase 
To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern 
Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. 
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech. 



THE BROOK, 137 

He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said : 

"That was the four- year-old I sold the squire." 

And there he told a long, long-winded tale 

Of how the squire had seen the colt at grass, 

And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd, 140 

And how he sent the bailiff to the farm 

To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd, 

And how the bailiff swore that he was mad, 

But he stood firm ; and so the matter hung ; 

He gave them hne : and five days after that 

He met the bailifi" at the Golden Fleece, 

Who then and there had offer'd something more. 

But he stood firm ; and so the matter hung ; 

He knew the man ; the colt would fetch its price ; 

He gave them line : and how by chance at last 150 

(It might be May or April, he forgot. 

The last of April or the first of May) 

He found the bailiff riding by the farm, 

And, talking from the point, he drew him in, 

And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale, 

Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand. 

' Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he, 
Poor fellow, could he help it? recommenced, 
And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle. 
Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho, 160 

Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt, 
Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest. 
Till, not to die a listener, I arose. 
And with me Philip, talking still ; and so 
We turn'd our foreheads from the falling sun, 
And following our own shadows thrice as long 
As when they follow'd us from Philip's door, 
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content 
Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well. 



13S THE BROOK 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots, 170 

I slide, by hazel covers ; 
I move the sweet forget-me-nots 

That grow for happy lovers. 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, 

Among my skimming swallows ; 
I make the netted sunbeam dance 

Against my sandy shallows. 

I murmur under moon and stars 

In brambly wildernesses ; 
I linger by my shingly bars ; 180 

I loiter round my cresses ; 

And out again I curve and flow 

To join the brimming river. 
For men may come and men may go, 

But I go on forever. 

Yes, men may come and go ; and these are gone, 

All gone. My dearest brother, Edmund, sleeps, 

Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire, 

But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome 

Of Brunelleschi ; sleeps in peace : and he, 190 

Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words 

Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb : 

I scraped the lichen from it : Katie walks 

By the long wash of Australasian seas 

Far off, and holds her head to other stars, 

And breathes in converse seasons. All are gone.' 

So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile 
In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind 
Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook 
A tonsured head in middle age forlorn, 200 

Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath 



THE BROOK. I39 

Of tender air made tremble in the hedge 

The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings ; 

And he look'd up. There stood a maiden near, 

Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared 

On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair 

In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell 

Divides threefold to show the fruit within : 

Then, wondering, ask'd her, 'Are you from the farm?' 

'Yes,' answer'd she. * Pray stay a Httle : pardon me ; 210 

What do they call you? ' ' Katie.' ' That were strange. 

What surname?' 'Willows.' 'No!' 'That is my 

name.' 
' Indeed ! ' and here he look'd so self-perplext, 
That Katie laugh'd, and laughing blush'd, till he 
Laugh'd also, but as one before he wakes, 
Who feels a ghmmering strangeness in his dream. 
Then looking at her : ' Too happy, fresh and fair, 
Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom, 
To be the ghost of one who bore your name 
About these meadows, twenty years ago.' 220 

' Have you not heard ? ' said Katie, ' we came back. 
We bought the farm we tenanted before. 
Am I so like her? so they said on board. 
Sir, if you knew her in her English days. 
My mother, as it seems you did, the days 
That most she loves to talk of, come with me. 
My brother James is in the harvest-field : 
But she — you will be welcome — O, come in ! ' 



140 



ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 




ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF 
WELLINGTON. 

I. 

Bury the Great Duke 

With an empire's lamentation, 
Let us bury the Great Duke 

To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, 
Mourning when their leaders fall, 
Warriors carry the warrior's pall, 
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. 



II. 

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore ? 
Here, in streaming London's central roar. 
Let the sound of those he wrought for, 
And the feet of those he fought for. 
Echo round his bones forevermore. 



ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 14] 



III. 



Lead out the pageant : sad and slov/, 

As fits an universal woe, 

Let the long long procession go, 

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, 

And let the mournful martial music blow ; 

The last great Englishman is low. 



IV. 

Mourn, for to us he seems the last, 

Remembering all his greatness in the past. 20 

No more in soldier fashion will he greet 

With lifted hand the gazer in the street. 

O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute : 

Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood. 

The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, 

Whole in himself, a common good. 

Mourn for the man of amplest influence, 

Yet clearest of ambitious crime. 

Our greatest yet with least pretence, 

Great in council and great in war, 30 

Foremost captain of his time. 

Rich in saving common-sense, 

And, as the greatest only are. 

In his simplicity sublime. 

O good gray head which all men knew, 

O voice from which their omens all men drew, 

O iron nerve to true occasion true, 

O fallen at length that tower of strength 

Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew ! 

Such was he whom we deplore. 4° 

The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er. 

The great World- victor's victor will be seen no more. 



142 ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 



All is over and done : 

Render thanks to the Giver, 

England, for thy son. 

Let the bell be toU'd. 

Render thanks to the Giver, 

And render him to the mould. 

Under the cross of gold 

That shines over city and river, 50 

There he shall rest forever 

Among the wise and the bold. 

Let the bell be toll'd, 

And a reverent people behold 

The towering car, the sable steeds : 

Bright let it be with his blazon'd deeds, 

Dark in its funeral fold. 

Let the bell be toll'd : 

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd ; 

And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd 60 

Thro' the dome of the golden cross ; 

And the volleying cannon thunder his loss ; 

He knew their voices of old. 

For many a time in many a clime 

His captain's-ear has heard them boom 

Bellowing victory, bellowing doom ; 

When he with those deep voices wrought, 

Guarding realms and kings from shame ; 

With those deep voices our dead captain taught 

The tyrant, and asserts his claim 70 

In that dread sound to the great name. 

Which he has worn so pure of blame. 

In praise and in dispraise the same, 

A man of well-attemper'd frame. 

O civic muse, to such a name, 



ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 1 43 

To such a name for ages long, 
To such a name, 

Preserve a broad approach of fame, 
And ever- echoing avenues of song. 

VI. 

Who is he that cometh, Hke an honor'd guest, 80 

With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest, 

With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest ? 

Mighty Seaman, this is he 

Was great by land as thou by sea. 

Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man, 

The greatest sailor since our world began. 

Now, to the roll of muffled drums, 

To thee the greatest soldier comes ; 

For this is he 

Was great by land as thou by sea ; 90 

His foes were thine ; he kept us free. 

O give him welcome, this is he, 

Worthy of our gorgeous rites, 

And worthy to be laid by thee ; 

For this is England's greatest son, 

He that gain'd a hundred fights, 

Nor ever lost an English gun ; 

This is he that far away 

Against the myriads of Assaye 

Clash'd with his fiery few and won j 100 

And underneath another sun, 

Warring on a later day, 

Round affrighted Lisbon drew 

The treble works, the vast designs 

Of his labor'd rampart-lines. 

Where he greatly stood at bay, 

Whence he issued forth anew, 

And ever great and greater grew, 



144 ODE TO THE DUKE OE WELLINGTON. 

Beating from the wasted vines 

Back to France her banded swarms, 

Back to France with countless blows, 

Till o'er the hills her eagles flew 

Past the Pyrenean pines, 

Follow'd up in valley and glen 

With blare of bugle, clamor of men, 

Roll of cannon and clash of arms, 

And England pouring on her foes. 

Such a war had such a close. 

Again their ravening eagle rose 

In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing wings. 

And barking for the thrones of kings ; 

Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown 

On that loud Sabbath shook the spoiler down ; 

A day of onsets of despair ! 

Dash'd on every rocky square 

Their surging charges foam'd themselves away ; 

Last, the Prussian trumpet blew ; 

Thro' the long-tormented air 

Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray. 

And down we swept and charged and overthrew. 

So great a soldier taught us there. 

What long-enduring hearts could do . 

In that world-earthquake, Waterloo ! 

Mighty Seaman, tender and true. 

And pure as he from taint of craven guile, 

O saviour of the silver- coasted isle, 

O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, 

If aught of things that here befall 

Touch a spirit among things divine. 

If love of country move thee there at all. 

Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine ! 

And thro' the centuries let a people's voice 

In full acclaim, 



ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. I45 

A people's voice, 

The proof and echo of all human fame, 

A people's voice, when they rejoice 

At civic revel and pomp and game. 

Attest their great commander's claim 

With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, 

Eternal honor to his name. 150 

VII. 

A people's voice ! we are a people yet. 

Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget 

Confused by brainless mobs and lav/less Powers ; 

Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set 

His Briton in blown seas and storming showers. 

We have a voice, with which to pay the debt 

Of boundless love and reverence and regret 

To those great men who fought, and kept it ours. 

And keep it ours, O God, from brute control ; 

O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul 160 

Of Europe, keep our noble England whole. 

And save the one true seed of freedom sown 

Betwixt a people and their ancient throne. 

That sober freedom out of which there springs 

Our loyal passion for our temperate kings ; 

For, saving that, ye help to save mankind 

Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, 

And drill the raw world for the march of mind, 

Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just. 

But wink no more in slothful overtrust. 170 

Remember him who led your hosts ; 

He bade you guard the sacred coasts. 

Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall ; 

His voice is silent in your council-hall 

Forever ; and whatever tempests lower 

Forever silent ; even if they broke 

In thunder, silent ; yet remember all 



146 ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke ; 

Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, 

Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power ; 180 

Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow 

Thro' either babbling world of high and low ; 

Whose life was work, whose language rife 

With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 

Who never spoke against a foe ; 

Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke 

All great self-seekers trampling on the right. 

Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named ; 

Truth-lover was our English Duke : 

Whatever record leap to light '9° 

He never shall be shamed. 

VIII. 

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars 

Now to glorious burial slowly borne, 

Follow'd by the brave of other lands, 

He, on whom from both her open hands 

Lavish Honor shower' d all her stars. 

And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn. 

Yea, let all good things await 

Him who cares not to be great. 

But as he saves or serves the state. 200 

Not once or twice in our rough island- story, 

The path of duty was the way to glory : 

He that walks it, only thirsting 

For the right, and learns to deaden 

Love of self, before his journey closes. 

He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 

Into glossy purples, which out-redden 

All voluptuous garden-roses. 

Not once or twice in our fair island-story. 

The path of duty was the way to glory : 210 

He, that ever following her commands, 



ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 14? 

On with toil of heart and knees and hands, 

Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won 

His path upward, and prevail'd, 

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled 

Are close upon the shining table-lands 

To which our God Himself is moon and sun. 

Such was he : his work is done. 

But while the races of mankind endure, 

Let his great example stand 220 

Colossal, seen of every land. 

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure ; 

Till in all lands and thro' all human story 

The path of duty be the way to glory : 

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame 

For many and many an age proclaim 

At civic revel and pomp and game, 

And when the long-illumined cities flame, 

Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, 

With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, 230 

Eternal honor to his name. 

IX. 

Peace, his triumph will be sung 

By some yet unmoulded tongue 

Far on in summers that we shall not see. 

Peace, it is a day of pain 

For one about whose patriarchal knee 

Late the little children clung : 

O peace, it is a day of pain 

For one upon whose hand and heart and brain 

Once the weight and fate of Europe hung. 240 

Ours the pain, be his the gain ! 

More than is of man's degree 

Must be with us, watching here 

At this, our great solemnity. 

Whom we see not we revere ; 



148 ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

We revere, and we refrain 

From talk of battles loud and vain, 

And brawling memories all too free 

For such a wise humility 

As befits a solemn fane : 250 

We revere, and while we hear 

The tides of Music's golden sea 

Setting toward eternity. 

Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, 

Until we doubt not that for one so true 

There must be other nobler work to do 

Than when he fought at Waterloo, 

And Victor he must ever be. 

For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill 

And break the shore, and evermore 260 

Make and break, and work their will ; 

Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 

Round us, each with different powers, 

And other forms of life than ours, 

What know we greater than the soul ? 

On God and Godlike men we build our trust. 

Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears : 

The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears : 

The black earth yawns : the mortal disappears ; 

xA.shes to ashes, dust to dust ; 270 

He is gone who seem'd so great. — 

Gone ; but nothing can bereave him 

Of the force he made his own 

Being here, and we believe him 

Something far advanced in state, 

And that he wears a truer crown 

Than any wreath that man can weave him. 

But speak no more of his renown, 

Lay your earthly fancies down. 

And in the vast cathedral leave him. 280 

God accept him, Christ receive him. 



NOTES 



ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES. 

Bayne, Mr. Peter Bayne's Lessons from My Masters (Amer. ed., 1879). 

Brimley, Mr. George Brjmley's paper on Tennyson in Cambridge Essays, 1855. 

Carr, Mr. J. Comyns Carr's papers on Tennyson in Cornhill Magazine, Feb. and 
July, 1880. 

Cf. {confer), compare. 

Corson, Prof. H. Corson's ed. of Tennyson's Dream of Fair IVometi and Two 
Voices (New York, 1S82). 

F. Q., Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

Fol., following. 

Forman, Mr. H. B. Forman's O it r Living Poets {\^ov\dor\, 1871). 

Id. {idem), the same. 

Imp. Diet., Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary (Century Co.'s ed., New York, 18S3). 

In Mem., Tennyson's In Memoriam. 

P. L , Milton's Paradise Lost. 

Pro!., prologue. 

Shepherd, Mr. R. H. Shepherd's Tennysoniana (2d ed., London, 1879). 

Stedman, Mr. E. C Stedman's Victorian Poets (Boston, 1S76). 

Tainsh, Mr. E. C. Tainsh's Study of the Works of Alfred Tennyson (London, 
1868). 

Wace, Mr. W. E. Wace's Alfred Teimyson, His Life and /F^^/?;.? (Edinburgh, 
1881). 

Warren, Hon. J L. Warren's " Bibliography of Tennyson," in Fortnightly Review, 
Oct. 1, 1865. 

Wb., Webster's Dictionary (revised quarto ed. of 1879). 

Wore-, Worcester's Dictionary (quarto ed.). 

The abbreviations of the names of Shakespeare's plays will be readily understood. 
The line-numbers are those of the "Globe" edition. 

Note. — Tennyson was born August Jih, 1809. \\\ the spring of 1S27 the Poeins by 
Two Brothers (Alfred and his elder brother Charles) was published. In 1S29 Arthur 
Hallam and Tennyson competed at Cambridge for the Chancellor's gold medal for a 
poem on Timbuctoo ; and Tennyson's poem, which won the prize, was published the 
same year. In 1S30 appeared the first volume to which Tennyson affixed his name, 
Poems, chiefly Lyrical; and in the winter of 1832, a second volume of Poejns. After 
an almost unbroken silence of ten years, the poet published in 1S42 a two-volume edi- 
tion of his Poems, including selections from the earlier volumes (long out of print) and 
many new pieces. As will be seen by our Notes, nearly all the poems in the present 
selection appeared in the editions of 1830, 1S32, and 1842 ; and of the more recent 
publications of the poet it is hardly necessary to say anything here. 



NOTES 




The good Haroun Alrascliid." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 



The poem first appeared in the Poems chiefly Lyrical, published in 
1830. 
Tainsh remarks that it is '' interesting as foreshadowing the power of 



152 NOTES. 

detailed description, vivid and very pictorial, which shows itself fully in 
the Palace of Art ^ 

Bayne speaks of it as a piece " which decisively announced the rise of 
a great poet." He adds: "The linguistic opulence of the poem is a 
small matter compared with the imagination required to plan and the 
fancy to execute such a work. The whole is a thing of the mind, a 
vision founded upon no fact, and yet we accompany the poet in his 
voyage down the Tigris with as distinct a realization of his where- 
abouts as if he were detailing the stages of a journey between Oxford 
and Twickenham. We see the blaze of light falling in golden green 
upon the leaves, when suddenly the million tapers of the Caliphate illu- 
minate the scene ; and we, as well as the poet, are drawn on in wonder- 
ing curiosity until we are in the presence of the monarch." 

2. Silken sail. Cf. Lady of Shalott, 22 : " The shallop flitteth silken- 
sail'd," etc. 

5. S/ieejiy. Cf. Madeline : " Hues of the silken sheeny woof ; " and 
LoT.<e and Death : *' Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight." 
We find sheen as an adjective in Spenser, F. Q. ii. i. 10 : "so faire and 
sheene." 

6. Adoion. Used both as preposition and as adverb. Cf. 30 below ; 
and see also Lotos-Eaters^ 19, 76, etc. 

12. Anight. By night ; as in Shakespeare, A. V. L. ii. 4. 48 : "Com- 
ing anight to Jane Smile ; " and Chaucer, Legende of Goode Women, 
1473 '• " With tempest thider were yblow anyghte." 

13. Drove. Drove over; a rare use of the verb. For bloomed, cf. 
Hakluyt, Voyages: "full of wild corne and peason bloomed, as thick, 
as ranke, and as faire as any can be scene in Britaine." 

23. Platans. Plane-trees (Latin platantis); as in Princess, iii. 159: 
" the thick-leaved platans of the vale." 

47. Rivage. Bank. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. iv. 6. 20 : 

"The which Pactolus with his waters shere 
Throws forth upon the rivage round about him nere." 

48. Rillets. A diminutive, like rivnlet, streamlet, etc. 

58. EngraiJi'd. Dyed, colored. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Feb. : " With 
leaves engrained in lusty greene," etc. 

59. Marge. Cf. Morte d'' Arthur, 116 : " about the marge," etc. 
64. Tiars. A contraction of tiaras. 

68. Coverture. Cf. Shakespeare, Mtich Ado, iii. i. 30 : " the woodbine 
coverture." 

70. Biilbid. The Persian name of the nightingale. Cf. Princess, iv. 
103 : 

" but smiling, ' Not for thee,' she said, 
' O Bulbul, any rose of GuHstan 
Shall burst her veil,' " etc. 

71. Not he ; but something, tXc. Cf. Shelley, To a Skylark: 

" Hail to thee. Withe Spirit ! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." 



THE POET. 153 

84. Counterchanged. Variegated. Cf . In Mem. 89 : 

" Witch-elms that counterchange the floor 
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright." 

loi. Pleasance. Pleasure. Cf. Lilian : " Pleasance in love-sighs ; " 
Spenser, F. Q. i. 2. 30: " Faire seemely pleasaunce each to other makes," 
etc. 

103. S^i//y sound. Cf. " dully sound " in Palace of Art, 275. 

106. Rosaries. Gardens or beds of roses ; the etymological meaning 
of the word (Latin rosaritim). 

115. Cedarn. Ci. Gerainl and Enid :" A cedarn cnhinet." See also 
Milton, CoDius, 990 : " About the cedarn alleys." 

125. Silvers. That is, silver candlesticks ; perhaps a unique instance 
of the plural. 

127. Mooned. Crowned with the Mohammedan crescent. 

135. Argent-lidded. Cf. Dream of Fair Women, 158: "The polish'd 
argent of her breast ; " and St. Agnes, 16 : "To yonder argent round." 

148. Diaper' d. Entirely covered, as in diaper work. 



THE POET. 



This poem also appeared in the 1830 volume The Westminster Re- 
view, of Jan, 1831, referred to it as giving the author's " own just 
conception of the grandeur of a poet's destiny." The passage closes 
prophetically thus : " If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson be correct, he 
too is a poet ; and many years hence may he read his juvenile descrip- 
tion of that character with the proud consciousness that it has become 
the description and history of his own work." 

3. Dozver'd with the hate of hate, etc. Of course this means that the 
poet hates hate, etc. It is curious that F. W. Robertson should have 
e.x-plained it thus: "That is, the Prophet of Truth receives for his 
dower the scorn of men in whose breasts scorn dwells, hatred from men 
who hate, while his reward is in the gratitude and affection of men who 
seek the truth which they love, more eagerly than the faults which their 
acuteness can blame." His comment on the next stanza, in connection 
with which he quotes lines 33-40 below, is better : " Rare gifts of nature : 
power to read the ' open secret of the universe ; ' the apostleship of 
light, truth, liberty ; the faculty of discerning the life and meaning 
which underlie all forms : this is Tennyson's notion of a poet." 

15. From Calpe unto Caucasus. Calpe, one of the Pillars of Hercu- 
"'es, was a limit of the ancient world to the west, as Caucasus was to 
the east. 

19. The field-flower. The dandelion, for instance. 

25. Bravely. In the old sense of admirably; as in Shakespeare, 



154 NOTES. 

Temp. V. I. 241, where in reply to Ariel's question, " Was 't well done ? " 
Prospero says, " Bravely, my diligence ! " Cf. also Cy7nb. ii. 2. 15 : 

" How bravely thou becom'st thy bed, fresh lily, 
And whiter than the sheets ! " 

35. The wreaths of floating dark upcurVd. The breaking up of the 
darkness like mist or cloud. 



THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 

The poem (first published in 1832) is founded upon the Arthurian 
legend which was later made the subject of Lancelot and Elaine. 
5. Camelot. The capital of Arthur. Ci. Gareth and Lynette : 

" Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces 
And stately, rich in emblem and the work 
Of ancient kings who did their days in stone ; 
Which Merlin's hand, the Mage of Arthur's court, 
Knowing all arts, had touch'd, and everywhere 
At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening peak 
And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven." 

10. Willaivs whiten, etc. The first reading was : 

" Willows whiten, aspens shiver, 

The sunbeam showers break and quiver 
In the stream that runneth ever," etc. 

11. Dusk and shiver. No words could better express the effect of the 
breezes on the water. 

30. Cheerly. Cheerily, cheerfully. Cf. Shakespeare, Rich. II. i. 3. 66 : 
" But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath," etc. 

71. I am half sick of shadoTos. The exclamation is most significant 
and pathetic. 

83. Like tc ^ , 

nomical figures and allusions. Cf. the next stanza. 

87. Baldric. Belt; used by Tennyson only here, as by Shakespeare 
only in Much Ado, i. i. 244: '" hang my bugle in an invisible baldric." 

loi. Hooz'es. The old plural of hoofMSO.^ by the poet nowhere else, 
though we find 7vhite-hoov'd in GLiione, 50. 

157. Deadpale between. The reading down to 1873 was " A corse 
between," etc. 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 

This poem has undergone many changes since its first appearance in 
the volume of 1832. There it began with the following stanza, the loss 
of which no one will much regret : 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 155 

" I met in all the close green ways, 

While walking with my Hne and rod, 
The wealthy miller's mealy face, 

Like the moon in an ivy-tod. 
He look'd so jolly and so good, 

While fishing in the mill-dam water, 
I laugh'd to see him as he stood, 

And dreamt not of the miller's daughter." 

The second stanza, now the first, remains unaltered; and the only 
change in the next is can make for " makes " in the last line. 

1 8. Own sweet. The original version has " darling " here, and "own 
sweet " for darling in 23. 

20. Shall be unriddled. Cf. The Two Voices, 170: "the riddle of the 
earth ; " and Palace of Art, 213 : *' the riddle of the painful earth." 

^y Long and listless. Note the alli'.eration with / in this stanza, as 
also in the loth and nth below. 

42. Making 7noan. Ci. Princess, \i\. 206: " the moan of doves in im- 
memorial elms ; " and see our ed. p. 1S5. 

52. Glance and poise. " If you looked at minnows every day for a 
week, you would not learn much more about them than lies in these 
two words. The whole biography of a minnow is there. To poise in 
perfect stillness and almost perfect invisibility, and then to become 
visible for the tenth part of a second in that strange glancing gleam, or 
glint, of the silvery side, as the tiny creature darts away — this is the 
complete circle of a minnow's observable activities " (Bayne). 

53. When. Some editions have "where." 

59. ['' T was April then), ^\z. The early reading is : 

" ('T was April then) I came and lay 
Beneath those gummy chestnut buds 
That glisten' d in the April blue." 

" Breezy blue, though an after-thought, describes an April day almost 
by inspiration. Nothing can be truer to nature than the suppressed 
*' gimimy chestnut buds,' but the word is ugly and would offend weak- 
stomached Tennysonian brethren "* (Warren). 

67. In my head. All the earlier eds. have " in the head." 
The stanza well describes what most readers will recognize as a fa- 
miliar experience. 

'j^. A trout. In the first version 

" a water-rat from off the bank 
Plung'd in the stream." 

id. And there a vision, etc. The early reading is : 

" Down looking tliro' the sedges rank 
I saw your troubled image there. 
Upon the dark and dimpled beck 
It wander'd like a floating light." 

93. My mother thought, etc. As Bayne remarks, this shows "a curi- 
ous maturity of observation " in a writer of twenty-two. " A piece of 

* As it did Christopher North. See Black%vood, May, 1832. 



156 NOTES. 

knowledge this which one would expect to be more clearly apprehended 
by an old man than a stripling. Often, indeed, as life goes on, and as 
we live over again in meditation the scenes of by-gone years, our own 
actions and the feelings and motives of other people, which were dim 
to us at the time, become distinct. Experience has taught us to inter- 
pret. In exquisite dramatic accordance, also, with the retrospective 
interest of an elderly man, is the specification of objects which happy 
love clothed, for him, with a new charm. Had you asked the youth, he 
would have spoken only of his Alice ; the old man dwells garrulously, 
and with Morland-like picturesqueness of detail, on the objects which 
had been gilded with the light of love." [Bayne then quotes the next 
stanza: " I loved the brimming wave," etc.] 

97. / looed, etc. The first quatrain of the stanza was originally as 
follows : 

" How dear to me in youth, my love, 
Was everything about tlie mill — 
The black and silent r-ool above, 
The pool beneath that ne'er stood still," etc. 

98. Meadows round the viill. Alliteration with m runs through the 
stanza. See on 33 above. 

105. And oft in raviblbigs, etc. The early reading was thus : 

" In rambling on the eastern wold, 

When thro' the showery April nights 
Their hueless crescent glimmer'd cold, 

From all the other village lights 
I knew your taper far away. 

My heart was full of trembling hope, 
Down from the wold I came and lay 

Upon the dewy swarded slope." 

The following stanza, now suppressed, preceded the above : 

" That slope beneath the chestnut tall, _ 

Is woo'd with choicest breaths of air : 
Methinks that I could tell you all 

The cowslips and the king-cups there ; 
Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent, 

Whose round leaves hold the gather'd shower, 
Each quaintly-folded cuckoo pint, 

Each silver-paly cuckoo flower," 

117. O that I were, etc. The following has also been suppressed : 

" O that I were the wreath she wreathes, 
The mirror where her sight she feeds, 
The song she sings, the air she breathes, 
The letters of the book she reads." 

129. But when at last, etc. The first version was as follows: 

" I loved, but when I dared to speak 

My love, the lanes were white with may ; 
Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek 

Flush' d like the coming of the day. 
Rose-cheekt, rose-lipt, half-sly, half-shy, 

You would, and would not, little one, 
Although I pleaded tenderly, 

And you and I were all alpne." 



THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 157 

130. With may. That is, with the white hawthorn blossoms ; not- 
"with May," as sometimes misprinted. Cf. Guinevere, 22: "Green- 
suited, but with plumes that mock'd the may." But in The Coming of 
Arthur, we find " white with May," the reference being to the flowers 
of the month in general, as the context shows : 

" Far shone the fields of May thro' open door, 
The sacred ahar blossom'd white with May, 
The sun of May descended on their king ; " 

and again : " Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May." 

137. And slozuly %uas my mother brought, etc. The bringing of his 
betrothed to visit his mother does not appear in the first version, but 
was added in 1842, the following stanzas being omitted to make room 
for the three new ones : 

" Remember you the clear moonlight 

That whiten'd all the eastern ridge, 
When o'er the water, dancing white, 

I stepp'd upon the old mill-bridge ? 
I liearcl you whisper from above 

A lute-toned whisper, ' I am here ; ' 
I murmur'd, ' Speak again, my love, 

The stream is loud ; I caniiot hear.* 

" I heard, as I have seem'd to hear, 

When all the under air was still, 
The low voice of the glad new year 

Call to the freshly-flower'd hill. 
I heard, as I have often heard 

The nightingale in leafy woods 
Call to its mate, when nothing stirr'd 

To left or right but falling floods." 

Bayne remarks : " The young squire marries the miller's daughter. 
All the traditions of worldliness, all the rules of Mammon-worship, all 
those buckram proprieties which are woven into shrouds and cerements 
to crush the soul out of living men and women, are defied in such an 
arrangement. Had the boy-squire's father been alive, it might not have 
been practicable. In no instance does Tennyson make the father bend 
his pride to consent to the unequal marriage of a son or of a daughter. 
But, like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Ruskin, he seems to have lurking 
somewhere in his heart a faith that women, when they are good, are in- 
finitely good, infallibly wise, capable of getting nearer to the mother- 
heart of nature than men. The squire, had he been alive, might have 
made insuperable difficulties, but the mother did what was right." 

203. Love, that hath, etc. This song was substituted in 1842 for one 
beginning " All yesternight you met me not." 

221. A 77iany. This expression is obsolete, though we still say afezv, 
and many a in a distributive sense. Cf. Shakespeare, K. John, iv. 2. 
199 : *' Told of a many thousand warlike French ; " M. of V. iii. 5. 73 : 
'* A many fools," etc. 

223. Yet tears they shed, etc. This stanza and the next were added 
in 1842. 

229. Had brought. The reading of the English ed. of 1884. All the 
American eds. we have seen (from 1849 down) read " that brought." 



158 



NOTES. 



239. Arise, and let us %vander forth, etc. The original reading is 

" I 've half a mind to walk, my love, 
To the old mill across the wolds, 
For look ! the sunsetfrom above 
Winds all the vale in rosy folds," etc. 



CENONE. 



First printed in the 1832 volume, but considerably altered since. 

4. Puts forth an artn, etc. One must have watched the mists floating 
through a wooded valley, to appreciate the accuracy of this description. 
Cf. 90 below. 

II. Sta7ids up and takes the mornt'jtg. There is a Dorian simplicity 
and vigor in this picture of the mountain-top catching the first flush of 
the dawn. 

15. Forlorn of Bereft of. For the participial, use, cf. Chaucer, 
Franklin^ s Tale: " Aurelius, that his cost hath al forlorn" (lost) ; etc. 
We find the past tense in Spenser, F. Q. iii. 9. 52 : " In her fraile witt, 
that now her quite forlore '' (deserted), etc. 

19. A fragjnent. That is, a broken rock. The use of the word is 
somewhat peculiar. In 218 below the tujntdcd from the glens makes it 
clear what the fragmejits are ; but tzvined with vine gives us no such 
information. 

22. O jnothcr Ida, etc. Stedman, commenting on Tennyson's indebt- 
edness to Theocritus, remarks : " It is in the QLnonc that we discover 
Tennyson's earliest adaptation of that refrain which was a striking 
beauty of the pastoral elegiac verse. ' O mother Ida, hearken ere I 
die' is the analogue of (Theocr. ii.) ' See thou, whence came my love, 
O lady Moon ; ' of the refrain to the lament of Daphnis (Theocr. i.), 
' Begin, dear Muse, begin the woodland song ; ' and of the recurrent wail 
in the Epitaph of Bion (Mosch. iii), ' Begin, Sicilian Muses, begin the 
song of your sorrow ! ' Throughout the poem the Syracusan manner 
and feeling are strictly and nobly maintained." 

24. For noza the noonday quiet, etc. Stedman compares and trans- 
lates the Thalysia (Theocr. vii.) : 

" Whither at noonday dost thou drag thy feet ? 
For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall, 
The crested lark is wandering no more " — 

and The Enchantress (Theocr. ii.) : 

" Lo, now the sea is silent, and the winds 
Are hush'd. Not silent is the wretchedness 
Within my breast; but I am all aflame 
With love for him who made me thus forlorn, — 
A thing of evil, neither maid nor wife." 

Mr. J. C. Carr {Cornhill Mag. Jan. 1880) notes that the first line is 
literally translated from Callimachus, Zaz'a^rrw// Palladis : /xeaa/j-fipiva, 



(ENONE. 159 

27. And the ivinds are dead. All the eds. we have seen (including 
that of 1873) down to 1884 have " and the cicala sleeps ; " and in the 
next line, " flowers droop." It probably occurred to the poet that the 
introduction of the cicala, or cicada (the Greek cicada, not our insect so 
called), was too nearly a repetition of that of \\\q grasshopper. 

30. ]\[y eyes are full of tears, etc. Cf. Shakespeare, 2 Hen. VI. ii. 3. 
17 : "Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief." 

39. As yonder zvalls, etc. According to Ovid [Heroides, xv. 179), 
Troy owed its origin to the music of Apollo's lyre. Cf. Tithonus : 

" Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing 
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers ; " 

and Princess, iii. 326: 

"the crowned towers 
Built to the Sun." 

50. White-hoov'd. See on Lady of Shalott, loi above. 

51. Siinois. A small river in Troas, flowing into the Scamander. Cf. 
202 below. 

65. Of pure Hesperian gold. From the gardens of the Hesperides. 

74. Married brows. Meeting eyebrows. 

82. Delivering. Announcing ; as in Shakespeare, Rich. II. iii. 3. 34 : 

" Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle 
Into his ruin'd ears, and thus deliver," etc. 

94. Brake. The ]Doet uses both brake and broke. See Princess, p. 149. 
102. Peacock. The bird was sacred to Here, or Juno. Cf. Shake- 
speare, Tetnp. iv. i. 74: '' her peacocks fly amain," etc. 
113. Mine. The early reading is " mines." 
129. Rest in a happy place, ^tz. Ci. Lotos-Eaters, 156: 

" For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd 
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd 
Round their golden houses," etc. 

See also Virgil, ALn. iv. 379 : 

" Scilicet is Superis labor est, ea cura quietos 
Solicitat 1" 

137. Certhwarted with the brazen-headed spear. That is, with the 
spear athwart or across them. 

151. Sequel of guerdon. Addition of prize or honorary tribute. 
161. Until eitdurance, etc. The first version reads thus : 

" so endurance, 
Like to an athlete's arm, shall still become 
Sinew'd with motion, till thine active will 
(As the dark body of the Sun robed round 
With his own ever-emanating lights) 
Be flooded o'er with her own effluences, 
And thereby grow to freedom." 

170. Idalian. Aphrodite or Venus was so called from Idalium, a 
mountain-city in Cyprus, which, like Paphos, was one of her favorite 
seats. 



i6o NOTES. 

174. Lucid. Cf. Princess, ii. 10: '* lucid marbles," etc. 
178. Sunlights. Spots of sunshine, the " tremulous isles of light " of 
The Princess, vi. 65. See our ed. p. 180. 
192. Fairest — why fairest wife ? etc. Stedman compares Theocr. xx. : 

" O shepherds, tell me truth! Am I not fair? 
Hath some god made me, then, from what I was, 
Off-hand, another being? . . . 
Along the mountains all the women call 
Me beautiful, all love me." 

197. Most loving is she ? Bayne says : " CEnone wails melodiously for 
Paris without the remotest suggestion of fierceness or revengeful wrath. 
She does not upbraid him for having preferred to her the fairest and 
most loving wife in Greece, but wonders how any one could love him 
better than she does. A Greek poet would have used his whole power 
of expression to instil bitterness into her resentful words. The classic 
legend, instead of representing Qinone as forgiving Paris, makes her 
nurse her wrath throughout all the anguish and terror of the Trojan 
War. At its end, her Paris comes back to her. Deprived of Helen, a 
broken and baffled man, he returns from the smoking ruins of his native 
Troy, and entreats CEnone to heal him of a wound, which, unless she 
lends her aid, must be mortal. OLnone gnashes her teeth at him, refuses 
him the remedy, and lets him die. In the end, no doubt, she falls into 
remorse, and kills herself — this is quite in the spirit of classic legend; 
implacable vengeance, soul-sickened with its own victory, dies in de- 
spair. That forgiveness of injuries could be anything but weakness — 
that it could be honorable, beautiful, brave — is an entirely Christian 
idea ; and it is because this idea, although it has not yet practically 
conquered the world, although it lias indeed but slightly modified the 
conduct of nations, has nevertheless secured recognition as ethically and 
socially right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and 
admiration of his readers for his CEnone, if he had cast her image in the 
tearless bronze of Pagan obduracy." 

220. The Abominable. Eris, the goddess of Discord. 

249. A shudder comes, etc. This touch was added in the 1842 edition. 

259. Cassandra. The prophetic daughter of Priam. 

264. All earth and air, etc. Mr. J. C. Carr [Cornhill Mag. Jan. 1880) 
compares Webster, Duchess of Malfi, iv. 2 : 

" The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass. 
The earth of flaming sulphur." 



THE PALACE OF ART. 

This is another of the poems in the volume of 1832 which has been 
much altered from the original version. Warren says : " Here, more 
than elsewhere, we regret the omission of so many exquisite verses that 
we have no space to quote all. The following is, however, so interest- 
ing that we must give it, note included: 



THE PALACE OF ART. l6l 

" ' When I first conceived the plan of the Palace of Art, I intended to 
have introduced both sculptures and paintings into it; but it is the 
most difficult of all things to devise a statue in verse. Judge whether I 
have succeeded in the statues of Elijah and Olympias : 

One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed, 

As when he stood on Carmel-steeps 
With one arm stretch'd out bare, and mock'd and said, 

" Come, cry aloud — he sleeps ! " 

Tall, eager, lean, and strong, his cloak wind-borne 

Behind, his forehead heavenly-bright 
From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn. 

Lit as with inner light. 

One was Olympias : the floating snake 

Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist 
Knotted, and folded once about her neck 

Her perfect lips to taste : 

Round by the shoulder moved : she seeming blithe 

Declined her head : on every side 
The dra,C;on's curves melted and mingled with 

The woman's youthful pride 

Of rounded limbs.' 

" Certainly no one but their author could have been in doubt about the 
success of these stanzas. If, indeed, Elijah be more of a picture than 
a statue, Olympias is as clear and calm as the Fates of the Elgin Mar- 
bles. The power of wedding intense passion with as intense a majesty 
of repose is the true master's mark. 

" The stanzas next to be quoted are not less successful in a directioii 
comparatively new to poetry. The poet's love of astronomy, the results 
of which culminate in this superb passage, have besides led to the natu- 
ralization through him into modern English poetry of numberless 
astronomic terms and metaphors. Any one versed in the Laureate's 
poetry can supply ample illustrations for himself ; but, if he has never 
read the following lines, they will open richer worlds to him. They are 
'expressive of the joy wherewith the soul contemplated the results of 
astronomical experiment : ' — 

Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies 

Shuddered with silent stars, she clomb, 
And as with optic glasses her keen eyes 

Pierced through the mystic dome, 

Regions of lucid matter taking forms, 

Brushes of fire, hazy gleams, 
Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like swarms 

Of suns, and starry streams. 

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars, 

That marvellous round of milky light 
Below Orion, and those double stars 

Whereof the one more bright 

Is circled by the other, etc 
II 



1 62 NOTES. 

" We must conclude our extracts with one charming little picture, 
hoping only that the grandeur of the preceding verses may not spoil its 
comparatively sober effect : 

Or blue-eyed Kriemhilt from a craggy hold, 

Athwart the light-green rows of vine, 
Pour'd blazing hoards of Nibelungen gold, 

Down to the gulfy Rhine." 

The Palace of Art ^ as Bayne remarks, " is one of many poems in which 
Tennyson becomes the ethical instructor as well as the poetical enter- 
tainer of his age. The truth he expounds and inculcates is very old, 
very simple, but of infinite importance, and specially requiring enforce- 
ment in a time of ripe intellectual civilization, and of the fastidiousness, 
cynicism, and cultured pride which are its besetting sins. Avoiding, 
with a willingness to make himself intelligible and useful which I wish 
he had exhibited in some other instances, the risk of being treated as 
having many meanings or none, he states, in a few lines addressed to an 
unnamed friend, his purpose in the poem. It is an allegory of a soul 
possessed of. many gifts, loving beauty and knowledge, and even good 
in so far as goodness may gratify an aesthetic taste, but forgetting that 
beauty, knowledge, and goodness ought to be made vassals unto charity : 

And he that shuts love out, in turn siiall be 
Shut out from Love, and on lier threshold lie 
Howrling in outer darkness. 

The palace of art is *a lordly pleasure-house,' built by the poet for his 
soul, in which all the delights of intellect and imagination — all the 
charm of fancied superiority to the mass of men — combine to make 
her hapi:)y. The problem to be solved is whether man can thus be 
made nobly and permanently happy, and the solution is experimental; 
that is to say, the poet places imaginatively before us a soul in the 
enjoyment of all delights, save spiritual and moral, realizes her experi- 
ence step by step, and finds, in the concluding stage of that experience, 
the solution of which he is in quest. . . . 

" The essence of the sin was not culture, but the selfishness and aristo- 
craticism of cultured pride ; not delight, whether of the senses or of the 
mind, but delight unshared by others; not abstention from the partisan- 
ship of creeds, but contemptuous isolation from those who accept them, 
and lack of sympathetic appreciation of the truth they contain. Such 
isolation, such pride, such culture, are indeed damnable." 

6. I chose, etc. The early reading was "I chose, whose ranged ram- 
parts ; " and in the next line, " great broad " for level. 

15. While Saturn ruhirls, etc. The shadow of the planet, projected 
on the ring, is a striking feature of the Saturnian system, as seen in the 
telescope. 

30. That lent broad verge. That gave a broad horizon. ¥or verge in 
this sense, cf. Princess, iv. 29 : " That sinks with all we love below the 
verge ; " Id. vii. 23 : " the slope of sea from verge to shore ; " and The 
Gardener^ s Daughter: "and May from verge to verge." 

49. Traced. Ornamented with tracery ; a rare use of the word. 

61. Arras. Tapestry. The description of the designs which follows 



THE PALACE OF ART. 163 

is the utmost perfection of word-painting. Each stanza is a finished 
picture. 

80. And hoary to the wind. To appreciate this touch, one must have 
seen a grove of olive-trees when the peculiar whitish-gray underside of 
the leaves is turned up by the wind. 

81. And one a foreground, etc. What an amount of detail in the four 
lines, which bring before the eye with almost the painter's power the 
triple wall of mountains rising from the volcanic plain in the fore- 
ground ! 

^T^. The scornful crags. The epithet is striking, and appropriate 
enough here ; but the poet did well to suppress a similar use of it in 
(Enone — 

"The golden-sandall'd morn 
Rose-hued the scornful hills " — 

as savoring too much of " modern subjectivity " in the description of 
nature. 

96. Babe in arm. The reviewers of the volume of 1832 made merry 
over this phrase, comparing it with the " lance in rest" of the romances 
of chivalry ; but the poet has not only retained it here but repeated it 
in the Princess, vi. 15 : 

" But high upon the palace Ida stood 
With Psyclie"s babe in arm." 

105. Uther^s deeply wounded son. That is, King Arthur. Cf. the 
Morte d^ Arthur, 306 below. • 

In the original version this stanza reads thus : 

" And that deep-wounded child of Pendragon 
Mid misty woods on sloping greens 
Dozed in the valley of Avilion 
Tended by crowned queens." 

III. The Ausoniaji king. Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, 
who was said to have received his laws from the nymph Egeria. Cf. 
Princess, ii. 65: "she That taught the Sabine how to rule." In the 
present passage the original reading was "the Tuscan king." 

113. EngraiVd. Indented; an heraldic term. 

115. Cama. The Hindu god of love, the Indian Cupid, whose name 
is also given as Kama, Kama-dew, Kama-deva, Camdeo, etc. He is 
sometimes represented as riding by night on a parrot, or lory ; as in 
Southey's Ctirse of Kehaina, x. 19: 

** 'T was Camdeo riding on his lory, 
'Twas the immortal youth of love," etc. 

See also Sir William Jones's Hymn to Camdeo: 

" O thou for ages born, yet ever young, 
For ages may thy Brahmin's lay be sung! 
And when thy lory spreads his emerald wings 
To waft thee high above the towers of kings, 
Whilst o'er thy throne the moon's pale light 
Pours her soft radiance thro' the night," etc. 



1 64 NOTES. 

ii6. Or sweet Europa's mantle blew, etc. The edition of 1875 ^^s 
" blue " for blew, but the latter is the reading of the earlier eds. and 
also of that of 1884. We suspect that the printer was responsible for 
the change ; but if it was the poet, he has done well in restoring what 
he first wrote. 

Stedman compares Moschus, ii. 125 fol. : 

" But she, upon the ox-like back of Zeus 

Sitting, with one hand held the bull's great horn, 
And with the other her garment's purple fold 
Drew upward, that the infinite hoary spray 
Of the salt ocean might not drench it through ; 
The while Europa's mantle by the winds 
Was filled and swollen like a vessel's sail, 
Buoying the maiden onward." 

121. Ganymede. There is another allusion to the lovely boy carried 
off by Jove's eagle, in the Praicess, iii. 55 : 

" They mounted, Ganymedes, 
To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn." 

137. The Ionian father, etc. Homer. 

149. The people here, etc. " Could Count de Montalembert convey, in 
any number of volumes, a more accurate account of 'the state of soci- 
ety in France,' before and during the first Revolution, than is contained 
in this stanza ? " (Bayne.) 

163. Venilaui. Bacon. Cf. Princess, ii. 144 : "But Homer, Plato, 
Verulam," etc. 

164. The first of those %vho knoro. As Mr. Carr notes, this is trans- 
lated from Dante, who calls Aristotle " II maestro di color che sanno." 

171. Memnon. Cf. Princess, iii. 100: "A Memnon smitten with the 
rising sun." 

174. Her lo7u preamble. Some one has fancifully suggested that the 
poet makes the nightingale feminine in The Princess, i 218 {" Rapt in 
her song "), because the bird is within the grounds of Ida's exclusively 
feminine college — just as mine host, a few lines before (i. 187), said 
that he " always made a point to post with mares," etc. In the present 
passage, however, we find Tennyson again following (as the poets gen- 
erally do) ancient fable rather than modern ornithology. In The Gar- 
dejier^s Daughter, on the other hand, he is true to the latter : 

" The redcap whistled ; and the nightingale 
Sang loud, as tho' he were the bird of day." 

175. To hear her echo'd voice, etc. Some English critic sneers at this 
as an acoustic impossibility; but the obvious meaning is that she hears 
her voice echoing through the vaulted rooms. 

1S6. A)iadems. Garlands, chaplets. Cf. Drayton, 6>w/^, 1 168: "Brest 
this Tree with Anadems of flowers ; " Shelley, Adoiiais : 

"Another dipt her profuse locks, and threw 
The wreath upon him, like an anadem." 

192. Be flattered to the height. In the editions down to 1853, this is 
followed by these two stanzas, for which the next three (as they now 
stand) were substituted : 



THE PALACE OF ART. 1 65 

" ' From sliape to shape at first within the womb 
The brain is modell'd,' she began, 
'And thro' all phases of all thought I come 
Into the perfect man. 

'" ' All Nature widens upward. Evermore 
The simpler essence lower lies : 
More complex is more perfect, owning more 
Discourse, more widely wise.' " 

This is admirable as a statement of a great scientific truth, but the 
poet may have decided that it was out of place here. 

204. Dri-ues them to the deep. See Matt. viii. 32. 

209. I take possession^ etc. The reading down to 1853 was as follows : 

" I take possession of men's minds and deeds. 
I live in all things great and small. 
I sit apart holding no forms of creeds, 
But contemplating all." 

213. The riddle of the painful earth. See on Miller's Daughter, 20 
above. 

217. And so she throve, etc. The reading down to 1853 was : 

" And intellectual throne 

Of full-sphered contemplation. So three years 
She throve, but on the fourth she fell," etc. 

219. Like Herod, etc. See Acts, xii. 21 fol. 

222. God, before whovi, etc. The expression is borrowed from an 
essay by Arthur Hallam, entitled " Theodicsea Novissima " (see his 
Remains, p. 363) : " I believe that redemption is universal in so far as 
it left no obstacle between man and God but man's own will ; that 
indeed is in the power of God's election, with whom alone rest the 
abysmal secrets of personality." 

227. Wrote ' Jl/ene, mene,' etc. See Daniel, v. 25 fol. 

241. And hollow shades, etc. Cf. Beckford, Vathek : " Soliman raised 
his hands toward heaven in token of su])plication, and the caliph dis- 
cerned thro' his bosom, which was transparent as crystal, his heart 
enveloped in flames." 

242. Fretted. Wrinkled, as in the young babe. 

247. Onward-sloping. Tennyson is fond of the word slope, both noun 
and verb. He often uses the latter to express motion; as in QLnojie, 3, 
21, Princess, iii. 273, vii. 197, Locksley Hall, 8, Geraint and Enid, 76, etc. 

251. The plunging seas. No word could better express the sound 
than plunging. Cf. Dream of Fair Women, 118 below. 

255. Circtimstance. The surrounding universe. Cf. /;/ Alem. 64 : 
"And breasts the blows of circumstance ; " where it is used in a siinilar 
though more limited sense. 

275. Dully. Perhaps the poet's own coinage; not found in Wb. or 
Wore. Cf. stilly in A^'ab. Nights, 103. 

252. Rocks. The eds. down to 1853 have " stones." 



1 66 NOTES. 



THE LOTOS-EATERS. 

The poem appeared first in 1832, and received some additions in 1842. 
It is foundeci of course on the Greek legend of the Lotophagiy which 
Homer uses in the Odyssey. 

" The Lotos- Eaters carries Tennyson's tendency to pure aestheticism to 
an extreme point. It is picture and music, and nothing more. The 
writer did not suppose he was writing Hamlet, or solving ' the riddle of 
the painful earth.' Nor must we go to the work with that demand 
upon it. . . . To attempt to treat it as an allegory, which figures forth 
the tendency to abandon the battle of life, to retire from a fruitless, 
ever-renewed struggle — to read it as we should read The Pilgrini*s 
Progress, and look out for facts of actual experience which answer to 
its images, is as monstrous and perverse as it would be to test a prop- 
osition of geometry by its rhythm and imagery. A mood of feeling, 
of course, it represents, and feeling dependent on and directed to dis- 
tinct objects, — in this latter respect alone differing from music. We 
may, of course, too, apply the mood of feeling thus depicted to the real 
events of life, and translate it into the actual language of men under 
the influence of ' mild-eyed melancholy.' So we might with a sonata of 
Beethoven's, — but the application is ours, and not the composer's; and 
if we attempt to limit the composer to our interpretation, rather than 
give ourselves up to his free inspiration from a purely musical impulse, 
all we get by it is, generally, a very poor verbal poem instead of a noble 
work that does not, however, belong to the region of articulate speech" 
(Brimley). 

Stedman, in his chapter on " Tennyson and Theocritus," remarks that 
this poem is " charged from beginning to end with the effects and very 
language of the Greek pastoral poets. As in CEnone, there is no con- 
secutive imitation of any one idyl ; but the work is curiously filled out 
with passages borrowed here and there, as the growth of the poem re- 
called them at random to the author's mind." 

4. In the afternoon, etc. "The Argonauts (Theocr. xiii.) come in the 
afternoon unto a land of cliffs and thickets and streams; of meadows 
set with sedge, whence they cut for their couches sharp flowering rush 
and the low galingale" (Stedman). 

8. A do7vmvard smoke. Cf. the "wreaths of dangling water-smoke " 
in Prhicess, vii. 198. 

II. Slmu-dropping veils, etc. The poet, in a letter to Mr. S. E. Dawson 
(see our ed. of The Princess, pp. 148, 153, 156, etc.) says : " When I Avas 
about twenty or twenty-one I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. Lying 
among those mountains before a waterfall that comes down one thou- 
sand or twelve hundred feet, I sketched it (according to my custom 
then) in these words : 

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn. 

When I printed this, a critic informed me that 'lawn was the mate- 
rial used in theatres to imitate a waterfall, and graciously added ' Mr. 



THE LOTOS-EATERS. 167 

T. should not go to the boards of a theatre but to nature herself for his 
suggestions.' And I Jiad gone to nature herself. 

" I think it is a moot point whether — if I had known how that effect 
was produced on the stage — I should have ventured to publish ihe 
line." 

Bayne remarks : " Whoever has seen a stream in its midsummer 
slenderness of volume, falling down a front of rock divided into steps 
or ledges, will admit that no words could possibly surpass these in de- 
scriptive precision. The Falling Foss, for example — a small cascade 
on one of the afHuents of the Esk, near Whitby — affords a realization 
so exact of the 'slow-dropping veil of thinnest lawn,' that it at once, 
when I saw it last summer, reminded me of the poem ; nor could an 
officer of the Geological Survey, writing with purely scientific intent, 
devise a more literal or a more expressive description." 

18. Wcrveii copse. Cf. 142 below. 

19. Adow7t. Cf. Arab. Nights, 6, 30, etc. 

23. Galingale. An English name for the Cyperns longtis, which 
grows in wet meadows. See on 4 above, and on 53 below. 

38. Between the sun and mooJi. The sun setting in the west as the 
moon was rising in the east. Some one explains it as = twilight, or 
between day and night. 

42. The wander mg fields. Cf. Virgil, ^n.V\. 724: "campi liquen- 
tes ; " and Id. viii. 695 : " arva Neptunia." 

46. There is szveet music here, etc. Bayne asks : *' What imagery 
could convey the lulling influence of sweet, faint music more movingly 
than this ? " 

50. Music, that gentlier, etc. Stedman compares Moschus, ii. 3 : 

" When Sleep, that sweeter on the eyelids lies 
Than honey, and doth fetter down the eyes 
With gentle bond," etc. 

and Theocritus, v. 50 : 

" Here, if you come, your feet shall tread on wool, 
The fleece of lambs, softer than downy sleep." 

51. Tired eyelids upon tired eyes. All the eds. print " tir'd " in both 
places, contrary to Tennyson's rule not to use the apostrophe when 
the verb ends in e. Did the poet mean to make //;W monosyllabic ? 

53. Here are cool mosses, etc. Stedman compares Theocritus, v. 
45 fol. • 

" Here are the oaks, and here is galingale, 
Here bees are sweetly humming near their hives ; 
Here are twin fountains of cool water ; here 
The birds are prattling on the trees, — the shade 
Is deeper than beyond; and here the pine 
From overhead casts down to us its cones." 

_ 70. Lo, in the middle of the wood, etc. " Equally wonderful are those 
lines in which, as contrasted with the feverish unrest, with the tumultu- 
ous wearing activity, of human existence, the deep quietude of nature's 
operations in the vegetable world is shadowed forth " (Bayne). 

72. With. By; as often in the Elizabethan writers. See Abbott's 
Shakes. Gr. § 193. 



t68 notes. 

84. Hateful is the dark-blue sky, etc. Stedman compares the passage 
with Moschus, v. 4 fol. : 

" When the gray deep has sounded, and the sea 
Climbs up in foam and far the loud waves roar, 
I seek for land and trees, and flee the brine, 
And earth to me is welcome ; the dark wood 
Delights me, where, although the great wind blow, 
The pine-tree sings. An evil life indeed 
The fisherman's, whose vessel is his home, 
The sea his toil, the fish his wandering prey. 
But sweet to me to sleep beneath the plane 
Thick-leaved; and near me I would love to hear 
The babble of the spring, that murmuring 
Perturbs him not, but is the woddnian's joy." 

90. Let Jis alone, etc. " Surely the philosophy of sad resignation — 
the cui bono, don't care, ;/// adniirari mood, that wants only to rest — 
the morphia-crave of a generation that has made the circuit of science, 
art, philosophy, to be told at last by Schopenhauer that life is misery 
and the universe a failure — never found more appropriate expression" 
(Bayne). 

109. Mild-minded melancholy. In the Englishman s Magazine for Au- 
gust, 1831, there is a sonnet by Tennyson which begins thus: 

" Check every outflash, every ruder sally 

Of thought and speech ; speak low, and give up wholly 
Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy," etc. 

114. Dear is the memory, etc. This stanza was added in 1842. 

116. But all hath suffer d change, etc. It will be borne in mind that 
this is the company of Ulysses on their long voyage homeward from 
Troy. 

131. By many wars. The early eds. have " with many wars." 

133. Moly. The fabulous herb of magic power, — 

" that moly 
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave " {Comjts, 636). 

Stedman compares Theocritus, v. 31 : 

" More sweetly will you sing 
Propt underneath the olive, in these groves. 
Here are cool waters plashing down, and here 
Tiie grasses spring; and here, too, is a bed 
Of leafage, and the locusts babble here." 

135. Eyelid. The early eds. have "eyelids." 

150. We ha7'e had enough of action, Qic. The remainder of the poem 
from this point was added in 1S42. 

156. For they lie, etc. Bayne remarks: "Plagiarism is out of the 
question, but Tennyson must, I think, have derived the suggestion of 
this passage from the Song of the Fates, repeated by Iphigenia at the 
end of the fourth act of Goethe's drama. The gods are therein de- 
scribed as sitting at golden tables in everlasting feast, or striding along 
from peak to peak of the mountains, while, up through gorge and chasm, 
steams to them, like light clouds of altar-smoke, the breath of strangled 
Titans : 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN: 169 

Sie aber, sie bleiben 
In ewigen Festen 
An goldeneu Tischen. 
Sie schreiten voin Berge 
Zu Bergen hiniiber : 
Aus schliinden der Tiefe 
Dampft ihnen der Athein 
Erstickter Titanen, 
/' Gleich Opfergeruchen,* 
Ein leichtes Gewolke. 

There can be no thought of plagiarism, because Tennyson's treatment 
is entirely his own. His substitution of the toiling races of men for the 
fallen Titans, as objects of contemplation to the happy gods, adds both 
to the sense of reality and to the pathos of the lines; but the coinci- 
dence seems too close to have been purely accidental. The germ, de- 
rived from Goethe, may very well have remained in Tennyson's mind 
without his recollecting whence it came." 
See also on (Enone, 128 above. 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 

The poem, originally published in 1S32, was considerably altered in 
the edition of 1842, and again retouched in the editions of 1845 ^.nd 
1853. For a single additional change, which we note in the edition of 
1884, see on 106 below. 

5. Dan Chancer. For the title (Latin dominiis, through the Old 
French dans) cf. Spenser, F. Q. iv. 2. 32 : *' Dan Chaucer, well of Eng- 
lish undefyled ;" and Id. vii. 7. 9: 

"That old Dan Geffrey (in whose gentle spright. 
The pure well head of" Poesie did dwell)," etc. 

Note 'also the sportive use of it in Shakespeare, L L. L. iii. i. 182: 
" Dan Cupid," etc. 

6. Those melodious bursts, etc. " The great literary outburst, as it has 
been called, of the days of Spenser and Shakespeare" (Stopford 
Brooke). 

21. And clattering flints, etc. For the correspondence of sound and 
sense, Corson compares the famous exam])le in Virgil, ^n. viii. 596 : 
" Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula canipum." 

22. Sajictiiaries. Whither they had fled for refuge. Cf. ^n. ii. 
512 fol. 

23. Past. The English eds. print "pass'd," though elsewhere regu- 
larly "past." The original reading was "scream'd." "This, though a 
small point, illustrates the ripening of a true poet. His mind passes 
from the turbulent to the quiet, from spasm to repose, from the ornate 
and florid to the simple " (Warren). 



170 A'OTES. 

27. Tortoise. The testudo of ancient warfare, the shell-like covering 
of overlapped shields held above their heads, with which the compact 
body of soldiers protected themselves against missiles thrown from the 
walls when storming a town or fortification. The name was also 
applied to a movable shed used for the same purpose. 

For the translation of a classical term into the vernacular, cf. "north- 
ern morn" for auro7'a borealis in Morte d^ Arthur, 190 (see also Talking 
Oak, 275), and "mother-city" for metropolis in Princess, i. in (so 
"mother town" in In Mem. 98). 

33. Sqicadrons and squares. Cf. Princess, v. 236 : 

" the embattled squares 
And squadrons of the Prince." 

43. Strikes along. Cf. In Mem. 15: "The sunbeam strikes along the 
world." Mr. J. C. Carr remarks that the present passage "would cer- 
tainly seem to have been suggested by the Hymn to Hermes : 

w? 5' ottot' a)Ku? vdi7/u,a 5ia o-repfoio neprjcrri 

'Ai-epos . . . 

ai Si re SLV7)9oi(Tiv an' b(\)6aXixuiv aixapvyal. 

47. Leagzwr'd. Beleaguered ; surrounded with a leaguer (cf. Princess, 
vii. 18), or besieging army. 

49. All those sharp fancies. The stanza aptly describes what most 
readers will probably be conscious of having experienced when falling 
to sleep. 

53. At last methonght, etc. As Corson remarks, this reminds us of 
" the opening lines of the htferno ; and the ' old wood ' has a like mean- 
ing with Dante's ' selva oscura.' " 

56. Shook. vScintillated, twinkled. 

71. lush green grasses. Cf. Shakespeare, Temp. ii. I. 52: "How 
lush and lusty the grass looks ! how green ! " 

76. Leading from laivn to lawii. The poet seems to be fond of allit- 
eration with the liquid /. See on Miller^s Daughter, 33; and cf. 
Palace of Art, 68, etc. 

78. Poiir''d back, etc. Corson quotes Wordsworth, Intimations of 
Immortality : 

" bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower." 

85. A lady. Helen ; " the Greek woman " of CEnone, 257. 

92. In her place. A touch of the old ]:)al]ad style. 

95. Many drew swords. Referring to the Trojan war. 

100. One that stood beside. Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, 
who was doomed to be sacrificed to Diana because her father had 
killed a stag sacred to the goddess. According to the story, she was 
not slain, Diana having relented and snatched her away, leaving a hind 
to be sacrificed in her place. 

loi. Averse. Turned away; as in Milton, P. L. viii. 138 : 

"with her part averse 
From the sun's beam," etc. 

104. This woman. That is, Helen. 



A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 171 

106. Which men calVd AjiUs, etc. This line appears first, so far as 
we are aware, in the ed. of 1884. The former reading was " Which yet 
to name my spirit loathes and fears." 

113. The high masts, etc. The stanza originally read thus : 

" The tall masts quiver'd as they lay afloat, 

The temples and the people and the shore. 
One drew a sharp knife thro' my tender throat 
Slowly, — and nothing more." 

It has been generally supposed that Tennyson was led to change the 
reading* by the ridicule of Lockhart in the Quarterly Reviezu (April, 
1833): "What touching simplicity! What genuine pathos! He cut 
my throat — nothing more ! One might indeed ask, What more she 
■would have y Possibly, however, as others have suggested, the altera- 
tion was made in order to conform to the classical story. As it now 
stands, it is not said that Iphigenia's throat is cut ; we may assume 
that she is snatched away just as the knife touches it. 

However that maybe, the critics are divided on the question whether 
the change is for the better. Bayne says of the original reading : " The 
picture, as drawn by the poet, is perfectly in keeping with itself, per- 
fectly complete. With a force of dramatic sympathy which it would 
be quite reasonable to compare with Shakespeare's, Tennyson enters 
into the person of the girl that is about to die, and enables the imagi- 
native reader to see through her eyes, to gasp and sigh with her iii her 
swooning anguish. . . . The light glimmers on her through blinding 
tears; she strives, as one has so often striven in a nightmare dream, to 
speak, but cannot ; the actual kings are there, not phantoms or spectres, 
but stern men with black beards and wolfish eyes. Dimly, through 
burning tears, the whole scene quivers before her, 'the temples and 
the people and the shore,' and then, real as everything else is real, the 
knife is drawn slowly through her throat. The altered version is not 
merely inferior to the other, but, what by no means necessarily follows, 
is capable of being demonstrated to be inferior, by reference to simple 
and irrefragable principles of criticism. Is it permissible that Iphi- 
genia should begin her narrative in such a fervor of imaginative pas- 
sion that she no longer speaks of the scene or of herself, but sees 
the whole in vision ; and should thus carry it on until it reaches its 
most agitating point; and should theii sink back into the infinitely 
colder and less imaginative mood of one who speaks from memory, 
who coolly separates her present self from her past, and talks of her- 
self as 'the victim'? She passes from poetic vision — '/ strove to 
speak, /could descry,' — to prosaic recollection. If criticism has any 
principles at all, such a declension ruins the passage. The 'bright 
death ' is due to the same unparalleled error. Seeing, as Tennyson 
originally saw, through the eyes of the swooning girl, the wolfish kings 
and flickering crowd, he had no leisure to think of ' bright death,' no 
idle ingenuity of spirit to hit upon such a conceit. ' Bright death ' 

* Warren and Corson speak of the change as having been made "in i860; " but 
we suspect that it dates back to the ed. of 1853, as we find it in American reprints as 
early as 1856. 



172 NOTES. 

means nothing in particular, and would probably suggest a flash of 
lightning if the knife had not been mentioned in the earlier version. 
... If I live for a hundred years, I shall always see, with my mind's 
eye, those wolfish kings, those quivering masts, that shore, that crowd, 
and most clearly of all that knife, as they flashed on me when Tenny- 
son showed me them in my boyhood ; and it amazes me beyond meas- 
ure that he should not resent, as I have resented, the attempt to dis- 
solve the vision by intrusion of bright deaths and historical talk about 
victims." 

On the other hand, Warren says : " The brilliant metonomy of ' bright 
death' vivifies the tamer 'sharp knife ' with the electric touch of ge- 
nius. The remainder of the verse is, we submit, rather weakened. 
The rapid and elliptical 'and nothing more' surely more vividly por- 
trays the last flash of fainting consciousness than the slow-drawn action 
and deliberate phrasing of ' And I knew no more.' " 

Rev. A. K. H. Boyd [Eraser's Mag. Feb. 1863) says that the original 
picture "passes the limits of tragedy, and approaches the physically 
revolting. It is, likewise, suggestive rather of the killing of a sheep or 
pig than of the solemn sacrifice of a human being." Of the revised 
stanza he says : " You will see that it has been most severely cut and 
carved; but to a most admirable result. . . . This is as though a piece 
of baser metal were touched with the philosopher's stone, and turned 
to gold." 

For ourself, we fully agree with Bayne. Tennyson's alterations are 
almost invariably improvements, but this seems to us one of the most 
glaring exceptions to the rule. The change from the first to the third 
person is a fall from poetry to prose, and bright death is only a stepping- 
stone that eases the descent. There was, moreover, a pathetic self-pity 
in my tender throat which we are sorry to lose. 

118. Heavy-plunging. Cf. Palace of Art, 251 above. 

127. A queen, etc. Cleopatra. Corson quotes a writer m Notes and 
Queries (4th series, vol. x. p. 499) : " How is Tennyson's description of 
Cleopatra, ' A queen, with swarthy cheeks, and bold black eyes,' to be 
reconciled with the fact that she was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy 
Auletes and a lady of Pontus, therefore of pure Greek blood } " 

132. Like the moon, etc. Mr. J. C. Carr compares The Witch of 
Edmonton^ ii. 2 : 

"You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea, 
To make it ebb and flow into my face. 
As your looks change." 

139. Caesar. Octavius, whom she could not captivate. 

145. We drank, etc. " The exultation of the wild witch-like woman 
when she thinks of her Antony is grand " (Bayne). 

Shepherd {Tennysojiiana, p. 10) quotes the following from the earlv 
version of the poem : 

" O what days and nights 
We had in Egypt, ever reaping new 
Harvest of ripe delights ! 



A BREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 173 

" What dainty strifes, wlien fresh from war's alarms, 
My Hercules, my gallant Antony, 
My mailed captain, leapt into my arms, 
Contented there to die. 

" And in those arms he died ; I heard my name 

Sigh'd forth with life : then I shook off all fear; 
O what a little snake stole Csesar's fame ! 
What else was left? look here." 

146. CanopHs. The brightest star in the constellation Argo (except 
when the variable Eta Argus is at its maximum), and next to Sirius the 
brightest in the heavens. 

155. The other. That is, Octavius. 

A ivonn. Cf. Shakespeare, A. and C. v. 2. 243 : 

" Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, 
That kills and pains not? " 

t6i. / died a queen, etc. As Mr. Carr remarks, this passage is 
" a splendid transftision " of the last lines in Horace's ode (i. 36) : 

" Invidens 
Privata deduci superbo 
Non humilis mulier triumpho." 

177. Undazzled. Recovered from the dazzling effect; a word not 
found in the dictionaries, and perhaps coined by the poet. 

181-1S8. The torrent brooks, etc. "How solemn, how true to the 
religious enthusiasm of a Hebrew maiden, are not only these verses, 
but all that 'the daughter of the warrior Gileadite ' sings and says!'' 
(Bayne.) It is JephUia's daughter who sings. See yi^r/f^j, xi. 29 fol. 
The Biblical narrative will explain the allusions in the following 
stanzas. 

213. No fair Hebretv boy, etc. Among the Hebrews, as among Ori- 
ental nations generally, offspring, and especially male offspring, was 
reckoned a blessing and an honor, and its absence a misfortune and 
disgrace. According to some eminent commentators, Jephtha's daugh- 
ter was not put to death but devoted to a life of virginity. 

225. Sarv God divide the night, etc. Cf. Horace, Od. i. 34 : 

" Diespiter 
Igni corusco nubila dividens." 

243. Thridding. This old form of th^'ead is used also in Princess, 
iv. 242 : " To thrid the musky-circled mazes ; " and in In Mem. 97 : 
" He thrids the mazes of the mind." 

For /wc^^d- (= sylvan growth) cf. Sir John Oldcastle : "Rather to 
thee, green boscage, work of God." In Princess, i. no we find " blow- 
ing bosks" (thickets) ; and Shakespeare and Milton use the adjective 
boshy. See P?'incess, p. 154. 

251. Rosamond, ^Xc. Stow says : " Rosamond the fayre daughter of 
Walter Lord Clifford, concubine to Henry II. (poisoned by Queen 
Elianor, as some thought) dyed at Woodsto'cke [a.d. 1177], where king 
Henry had made for her a house of wonderfull working ; so that no 
man or woman might come to her, but he that was instructed by the 



174 NOTES. 

king, or such as were right secret with him touching the matter. . . . 
It was commonly said, that lastly the queene came to her by a clue of 
thridde, or silke, and so dealt with her, that she lived not long after : 
but when she was dead she was buried at Godstow, in an house of 
nunnes beside Oxford, with these verses upon her tombe : 

Hie jacet in tumba Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda : 
Noil redolet, sed olet, quae redolere solet." 

Cf. the ballad of Fair Rosamond m. Percy's Reliqiies. 

359. Ftdvia's waist. Cleopatra puts the name of Fuivia, the wife of 
her paramour Antony, for that of Eleanor, the wife of Rosamond's 
royal paramour. 

363. The captain of my dreams. Venus, the morning star. The god- 
dess of love and beauty may well enough be called the r^/A?/;/ — the 
leader or inspirer — of the poet's dreams of fair women. Corson makes 
it mean " the sun ; " but, as we understand the context, the sun has not 
yet risen. The first beams of the dawn have appeared, and are broad- 
ening and brightening in the east. The morning star is up, but the 
darkness is not yet dispersed by the sunrise. Besides, the sun could be 
called the captain of his dreams only in the sense of controlling or 
checking them ; and this seems rather forced and far-fetched. 

366. Her, who ciasp'd, etc. Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir 
Thomas More. After his execution his head was exposed on London 
Bridge, but she obtained permission to take it down, and, after preserv- 
ing it as a precious relic till her death, was buried with it in her arms. 

369. Or her who knc7u, etc. Eleanor, queen of Edward I. of Eng- 
land, who accompanied her husband to the Holy Land in 1269. There 
he was stabbed in the arm with a dagger which was believed to have 
been poisoned; and Eleanor instantly applied her lips to the wound 
and sucked the blood until the surgeons were ready to dress it. 



THE EPIC: MORTE D'ARTHUR. 

This poem was first published in 1842, and was slightly retouched in 
subsequent editions. The Morte d' Arthur has been incorporated, with 
no other change than the omission of a single line (see on 58 below) 
in The Passing of Arthur, the last of the Idyls of the King; but it has 
continued to be included, with the original introduction and conclu- 
sion, in the complete editions of Tennyson. 

The poem would appear to have been written as early as 1837. 
Landor writes under date of December 9, 1837, as follows: "Yester- 
day a Mr. Moreton, a young man of rare judgment, read to me a manu- 
script by Mr. Tennyson, very different in style from his printed poems. 
The subject is the death of Arthur. It is more Homeric than any 
poem of our time, and rivals some of the noblest parts of the Odyssea " 
(Forster's Life of Landor, ii. 323). 



THE EPIC: MORTE D' ARTHUR. 175 

3, The sacred bush. The mistletoe. 

27. You kiiotv, said Frank., etc. The first reading (retained till 1846) 
was: 

" ' You know,' said Frank, ' he flung 
His epic of King Arthur in the fire! ' " 

37. And why, etc. The reading in the eds. of 1S42 and 1843 was: 

" and why should any man 
Remodel models rather than the life? 
And these twelve books of mine (to speak the truth) 
Were faint Homeric echoes," etc. 

52. So all day lottg, etc. Stedman says : " To my mind, there is a 
marked difference in style between the original and later portions of 
this work [the Idyls']. The Morte d^ Arthur of 1842 is Homeric to the 
farthest degree possible in the slow, Saxon movement of the verse; 
grander, with its ' hollow oes and aes,' than any succeeding canto, 
always excepting Guinez'ere." 

58. Sir Bedivere, the last, etc. This line is omitted in the Idyls. 

63. A great water. " This phrase has probably often been ridiculed 
as affected phraseology for ' a great lake ; ' but it is an instance of the 
intense present ative power of Mr. Tennyson's genius. It precisely 
marks the appearance of a large lake outspread and taken in at one 
glance from a high ground. Had ' a great lake ' been substituted for it, 
the phrase would have needed to be translated by the mind into water 
of a certain shape and size, before the picture was realized by the 
imagination. 'A great /(7/(v' is, in fact, one degree removed from the 
sensuous to the logical, — from the individual appearance to the generic 
name, and is, therefore, less poetic and pictorial " (Brimley). 

72. Canielot. See on lady of Shalott, 5 above. 

82. Samite. A rich silk stuff. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. iii. 12. 13: "In 
silken samite she was light arayd," etc. 

89. Seest. Printed " seest " in all the eds., indicating that the poet 
wants the dissyllabic pronunciation preserved. See the remarks on 
Tennyson's metre in Princess, p. 142 fol. 

94. Hest. Not to be printed ^hest, as if a contraction of behest. 
Shakespeare uses it oftener than behest ; as in Temp. i. 2. 274, iii. i. yj, 
iv. I. 65, etc. 

102. The shining Iroels. " The classical CBqiiora may have suggested 
the 'shining levels^ but there is a deeper reason for the change of 
phrase, for the 'great water,' as seen from the high ground, becomes a 
series of flashing surfaces when Sir Bedivere looks along it from its 
margin" (Brimley). 

107. Diamond sparks. The eds. down to 1853 have " diamond 
studs." 

III. This zaay and that, etc. A translation of Virgil, ^En. iv. 285: 
"Atque animum nunc hue celerem, nunc dividit illuc." 

115. Marge. Cf. Recoil. o/Arab. Nights, 59 above, 

121. I heard the ripple, ^ic. As Brimley remarks, "the 'ripple wash- 
ing ill the reeds,'' and the 'wild water lapping on the crags,' are two 
phrases marking exactly the difference of sound produced by water 
swelling up against a permeable or impermeable barrier." 



176 NOTES. 

131. Lief. Loved, beloved. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. i. 3. 28: "Then I 
leave you, my liefe, yborn of heavenly berth ; " Id. i. 9. 17 : " worthie to 
be her liefe ; " Id. iii. 2. 33 : "tell me therefore, my liefest liefe," etc. 

134. Across the ridge, etc. This line was inserted in 1853. 

172. Authority forgets a dying king, etc. As Brimley says, this is 
" thoroughly Shakespearian." " The personification assists the imagi- 
nation without distressing the understanding, as when dwelt upon, and 
expanded in detail ; deepening the impressiveness of the sentiment by 
giving along with a true thought a grand picture, — just such a passing 
flash of impassioned rhetoric as would become the highest oratory, and 
thrill through the hearts of a great assembly." 

181. For. Because; a common Elizabethan use of the word. 
Often it differs little from our looser conjunctional /tr (= because) ; 
but the difference is serious in a case like Shakespeare's M. for M. 
ii. I. 27 : 

" You may not so extenuate his offence, 
For I have had such faults ; " 

that is, the fact that I have been guilty is no excuse for him. Here the 
modern y^r would make nonsense of the passage. 

183. I luill arise and slay thee. As Forman remarks, this line is "one 
of the master touches of a masterly poem." 

188. Made lightnings, etc. " A series of brilliant effects is hit off in 
those two words, made lightnings. WhirPd in an arch is a splendid 
instance of sound answering to sense, which the older critics made so 
much use of ; the additional syllable which breaks the measure, and 
necessitates an increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to express to 
the ear the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And with what 
lavish richness of prescntative power is the boreal aurora, tlie collision, 
the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, brought before the 
eye ! An inferior artist would have shouted through a page, and emp- 
tied a whole pallet of color, without any result but interrupting his nar- 
rative, where Tennyson in three lines strikingly illustrates the fact he 
has to tell, — associates it impressively with one of nature's grandest 
phenomena, and gives a complete picture of this phenomenon besides " 
(Brimley). 

190. The northern morn. The aurora borcalis. See on Dream of Fair 
Women, 27 above. 

220. Looking zvistfidly . . . as in a picture. Mr. Carr compares /Eschy- 
lus, Agamemnon, 230 : 

efiaW eKaarov 
an' ojU.(u.aTOS /3e'Aei <|)tA.oi»CTa) 
npenovaa 'to? ei' ypa<))als. 

242. Lo f the level lake, etc. See on Dream of Fair Women, 76 above. 
See also 267 below. 

250. Shiver'' d to the tingling stars. "In some over-fastidious moods, 
we might be inclined to charge this with a touch of that exaggeration 
which belongs to the ' spasmodic school ; ' but the cry comes from a 
company of spirits, amid mountains whose natural power of echo is 
heightened by the silence of night, the clearness of the wintry air, and 



THE TALKING OAK. 177 

the hardening effect of frost. Such a cry at such a time and in such 
a place would thrill from rock to rock, from summit to summit, till it 
seemed to pierce the sky in a hurtling storm of multitudinous arrowy 
sounds, and die away in infinitely distant pulsations among the stars " 
(Brimley). 

253. Where no one comes, etc. " This passage may seem at first to 
add nothing to the force of the comparison, as the shrillness of the wind 
would not be greater in an uninhabited place than anywhere else in 
open ground. But the mournfulness of the feeling a man would expe- 
rience in such a place, from the sense of utter isolation and sterility, is 
blended with the naturally sad wail of the wind over a wide waste, and 
the addition thus becomes no mere completion of a thought of which 
only part is wanted for the illustration — though that were allowable 
enough, according to ordinary poetic usage, — but gives a heightening 
of sentiment without which the illustration itself would be incomplete 
and less impressive" (Brimley). 

266. Cuisses. Armor for the thighs ; also spelt cuishes. Cf. Shake- 
speare, I Hen. IV. iv, i. 105: 

" I saw young Harry with his beaver on, 
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd," etc. 

" The passage is a fine instance of a poetical use of simile and figure. 
The moon fading in the early morning, the dazzling brightness of the 
rising sun, the shattered column, the glancing flight of a shooting star, 
bring before the mind not only the dying king, pale and bleeding, but 
the contrast between his present weakness and the glory and triumphs 
of his chivalrous and brilliant life. In a few lines his whole story is 
told : it is not merely a dying warrior who lies before us, but the 
strength, the state, the splendor, and enjoyment of his past life flash 
before the imagination, and deepen the sadness and humiliation of his 
defeat and death " (Brimley). 

305. For so the whole round earth, etc. Mr. Carr remarks that these 
two fine lines are the versification of a sentence from Archdeacon 
Hare's sermon on The Lazu of Self- Sacrifice : '* This is the golden chain 
of love, whereby the whole creation is bound to the throne of the 
Creator." 

310. Avilion. See on Palace of Art, 105 above. 

353. That. So that ; as often in Elizabethan English. Cf. Shake- 
speare, y. C.\. I. 50: 

'* Have you not made an universal shout. 
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks," etc. 



THE TALKING OAK. 

Only two slight changes (the author oiTennysoniana says "one") 
have been made in the poem since its first appearance in 1842. 

Mr. J. Hutchison {St, PaiWs Magazine, Oct. 1873) leniarks : " Landor 



1 78 NOTES. 

himself, in his happiest vein, never conceived a more exquisite inv- 
aginary conversation. Here in sportive phrase and bantering talk, is 
the whole philosophy of forest-life set forth with a poetic felicity, saucy 
humor, and scientific precision of language, each admirable of its kind. 
The poem is literally a love-idyl and botanic treatise combined, and 
never surely were lovers and science — January and May, might one 
say — so delightfully harmonized; conveying, too, to those who have 
eyes to see and hearts to understand, glimpses of a spiritual interpreta- 
tion of nature, undreamt of by Pope and his school. . . . Seldom has 
the imagery of the woods been used with more appropriateness and 
effect than in this poem, and its poetic excellence is rivalled by its 
accuracy. No one but an accomplished practical botanist could have 
written it." 

Stedman calls the poem "that marvel of grace and fancy, that non- 
pareil of sustained lyrics in quatrain verse ; as exquisite in filigree- 
work as The Rape of the Lock, with an airy beauty and rippling flow, 
compared with which the motion of Pope's couplets is that of partners 
in an eighteenth-century minuet." 

II. That makes 7>ie thrice a man. Cf. The Miller'' s Daughter, 93-96. 

47. Bluff Harry. Henry VHI. ; his daughter Elizabeth being the 
man-7niiidcd offset oi 51 below. 

54. Thatioild luiiuL The violent storm of the night when Cromwell 
died. Some of the biographers of the Protector have asserted that his 
father was a brewer; Init this is very improbable, and does not justify 
the poet in calling the son a brezver, which he certainly never was. 

57. She-slips. All the old oak's metaj^hors are drawn from his own 
arboreal life and associations. The poet thinks as a tree and speaks as 
a tree, putting off his human nature for the nonce. 

63. /;/ teacup times, etc. In the days of Queen Anne. The artificial 
and affected pastoral poetry of that time is well hit off in the next 
stanza. 

69. May insects prick. The gall-flies. The 02ik feels the irritant fluid 
which the insect is supposed to prick into the leaf when it inserts its 
egg, and which causes the formation of the gall. 

89. For as to fairies. The big burly old fellow can hardly sympa- 
thize with creatures so delicate as the fairies. His character is as 
admirably sustained throughout as any in Shakespeare. 

107. dxlip. The Primiila elatior, or " greater cowslip." Cf. Shake- 
speare, W. T. iv. 4. 125 : "bold oxlips ; " and Drayton, Polyolbion, xv. : 

"To sort these flowers of showe, with other that were sweet, 
The cowslip then they couch, and th' oxlip for her meet." 

123. Holt. Wood or woodland ; seldom used except in poetry. Cf. 
Locksley Hall, 191 below. 

132. And tnrn\l to look at her. A touch that adds a new charm to the 
old figure. 

145. Yet seemed, etc. How subtly the poet gives a half-human sensi- 
bility to the garrulous veteran of the forest without violence to his real 
nature ! His " sense of touch " remains " somewhat coarse," he is still 



ULYSSES. 179 

" hard wood and wrinkled rind," and the pleasure he feels is at best 
only like the " blind motions " of his renewed life in the spring-time. 

148. The berried briony. The Bryoma dioica, a common plant in Eng- 
land, bearing red berries about the size of a pea. Cf. The Brook, 203 
below. 

181. I, rooted here, tic. Only a botanist can appreciate the blended 
poetry and science of this stanza. 

185. For ah! my friend, etc. The original reading was "For ah! 
the Dryad-days were brief," etc. 

199. Pursue thy loves, etc. This making the lover become a little jeal- 
ous when the oak grows so warm as to talk of "kiss for kiss " is as 
true to nature as it is humorous. 

215. The murmurs. The early reading is " The whispers." 

264. Lizard-point. The southernmost point of Great Britain, some 
twenty-three miles to the southeast of the Land's End. 

275. The northern morning. The aurora borealis. See on Morte 
d^ Arthur, 190 above. 

292. That Thessalian growth. The oak grove in Dodona (in Epirus, 
not in the neighboring Thessaly), where the black dove, flying from 
Thebes in Egypt, alighted, and proclaimed that there an oracle of Jupi- 
ter should be established. 

297. The younger Charles. Charles I. The story is a familiar one. 



ULYSSES. 



First published in 1842, and unaltered since. 

Mr. Carr says : " The germ, the spirit, and the sentiment of this 
poem are from the 26th canto of Dante's Inferno. Mr. Tennyson has 
indeed done little but fill in the sketch of the great Florentine. As is 
usual with him in all cases where he borrows, the details and minuter 
portions of the work are his own ; he has added grace, elaboration, and 
symmetry ; he has called in the assistance of other poets. A rough 
crayon draught has been metamorphosed into a perfect picture. As 
the resemblances lie not so much in expression as in general tone, we 
will in this case substitute for the original a literal version. Ulysses is 
speaking : 

" ' Neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my aged sire, nor 
the due love which ought to have gladdened Penelope, could conquer in 
me the ardor which I had to become experienced in the world, and in 
human vice and worth. I put out into the deep open sea with but one 
ship, and with that small company which had not deserted me. ... I and 
my companions were old and tardy. When we came to that narrow 
pass where Hercules assigned his landmarks, " O brothers," I said, " who 
through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not 
to this the brief vigil of your senses that remain, experience of the un- 
peopled world beyond the sun. Consider your origin ; ye are not 



l8o NOTES. 

formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge." . . . 
Night already saw the other pole with all its stars, and ours so low that 
it rose not from the ocean floor.' " 

R. H. Home {New Spirit of the Age, 1843) says of the poem : " The 
mild dignity and placid resolve — the steady wisdom after the storms of 
life, and with the prospect of future storms — the melancholy fortitude, 
yet kingly resignation to his destiny which gives him a restless passion 
for wandering — the unaffected and unostentatious modesty and self- 
conscious power — the long softened shadows of memory cast from the 
remote vistas of practical knowledge and experience, with a suffusing 
tone of ideality breathing over the whole, and giving a saddened charm 
even to the suggestion of a watery grave — all this, and much more, 
independent of the beautiful picturesqueness of the scenery, render the 
poem of Ulysses one of the most exquisite in the language." 

Bayne remarks: "Antithetically and grandly opposed to the nerve- 
less sentiment of The Lotos-Eaters is the masculine spirit of the lines 
on Ulysses, one of the healthiest as well as most masterly of all Ten- 
nyson's poems." 

In a like vein, Stedman declares that " for virMe grandeur and aston- 
ishingly compact expression, there is no blank-verse poem, equally re- 
stricted as to length, that approaches the Ulysses: conception, imagery, 
and thought are royally imaginative, and the assured hand is Tenny- 
son's throughout." 

Margaret Fuller writes in August, 1842: "I have just been reading 
the new poems of Tennyson. . . . One of his themes has long been my 
favorite — the last expedition of Ulysses — and his, like mine, is the 
Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the 
worldling of the Iliad. How finely marked his slight description of 
himself and of Telemachus ! " 

10. The rainy Hyades. The well-known group of stars in the head of 
Taurus. Cf. Virgil, ALn. i. 748 : " Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, gemi- 
nosque Triones." 

16. Delight of battle. " What a superb translation of the ce^'taininis 
gandia of the Latin poet ! " (Bayne.) 

22. Hoiv dull it is., etc. Shepherd {Tennysoiiiaita, p. 87) n6tes the 
"remarkable resemblance of thought and expression" to a speech of 
Ulysses in Shakespeare's T. and C. iii. 3. 150: 

" Perseverance, dear my lord. 
Keeps honor bright. To have done is to hang 
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
In monumental mockery," etc 

" The old sea-king, strong as a fishing-boat that has battled long with 
tide and storm, spurns the idea of rest" (Bayne). 

39. Most bhvmeless is he, etc. " Excellent young man ! — but what an 
unspeakable relief it will be never to hear his judicious remarks again ! 
A wilder set of fellows I have been accustomed to : 

My mariners. 
Souls that have toil'd and wrought and thought with me . . . 



LOCKSLEY HALL. l8l 

We need not quarrel with Tennyson for having bestowed those mari- 
ners on Ulysses in his old age. There were, indeed, none such. They 
all lay fathom-deep in brine ; no Homer, no Athene, had paid regard to 
them ; Ulysses returned alone to his isle, the hero only being of account 
in the eyes of classic poet or Pagan goddess. Tennyson's Ulysses is, 
after all, an Englishman of the Nelson wars rather than a Greek, and 
his feeling for his old salts is a distinctively Christian'sentiment. So, 
indeed, is his desire for effort, discovery, labor, to the end. It never 
would have occurred to Homer that Ulysses could want anything for 
the rest of his life but pork-chops and Penelope " (Bayne). 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 

The poem has been altered but little since its first appearance in 
1842. 

Bayne remarks : " It is, I fancy, to Locksley Hall, more than to any 
other of his poems, that Tennyson owes his hold upon the heart of the 
world. Partly this may be due to its being a peculiarly fascinating and 
piquant variation from his usual manner. It is trochaic in melody, the 
beat coming upon the first syllable in the metrical foot instead of, as in 
the iambus, on the second. The corresponding iambic measure, in 
which the beat falls on the second syllable, is exhibited in Macaulay's 
Lays of Ancient Rome: 

Then Ocnus of Falerli rush'd on the Roman three. 
And Lausalus of Urgo, the rover of the sea, 

"Tennyson generally uses the iambus. This is, indeed, the organic 
unit of measurement in English verse, forming the basis of the heroic 
stanza, rhymed and unrhymed, as employed in all the monumental 
works of English poetry. ... So long ago as the days of Aristotle the 
iambic measure was considered * the natural march-music of action 
and business.' It is most consistent with the genius of the English 
tongue, and Tennyson has evidently found it harmonize best with that 
patient elaboration, that minute and symmetrical working up of the 
pictures of his mind, in which he delights. In Locksley Hall, however, 
he gives voice to one of those high tides of emotion in which the full 
heart sometimes relieves itself, and on such an occasion it was more 
important to render the force and billowy splendor of the waves, to 
express sympathy with their glorious freedom, their magnificent bold- 
ness, and wildness, and tumult, their clapping of hands and revelry of 
infinite laughter, or passionate sobbing of grief, than to mould their par- 
ticular forms or to time their march upon the beach. In Locksley Hall, 
therefore, Tennyson escapes from that iambic regularity, that dignified 
perfection and repose, so characteristic of his general manner, into the 



152 NOTES. 

fitful and ringing, or wildly wailing and throbbing, melody of a trochaic 
measure." 

Brimley (Cajnbridge Essays, 1855) says : " It is against the fickleness of 
a woman . . . that the speaker in Locksley Hall has to find a resource. 
And he finds it in the excitement of enterprise and action, in glowing an- 
ticipations of progress for the human race. He not merely recovers his 
sympathy with his fellow-men, and his interest in life, which had been 
paralyzed by the unworthiness of her who represented for him all that 
was beautiful and good in life, — but he recovers it on higher and firmer 
ground. What he lost was a world that reflected his own unclouded 
enjoyment, his buoyant ardor and high spirits ; a world appreciated 
mainly in its capacity for affording variety to his perceptive activity 
and scope for his unflagging energies ; a world of which he himself, 
with his pleasures and his ambitions, was the centre. What he gains 
is a world that is fulfilling a divine purpose, beside which his personal 
enjoyments are infinitely unimportant, but in aiding and apprehending 
which his true blessedness is purified and deepened ; a world in which 
he is infinitely small and insignificant, but greater in his brotherhood 
with the race which is evolving ' the idea of humanity ' than in any pos- 
sible grandeur of his own. The poem has been called 'morbid,' a 
phrase that has acquired a perfectly new meaning of late years, and is 
made to include Morks of art, and all views of life that are colored by 
other than comfortable feelings. If Locksley Hall, ^lS, a whole, is morbid, 
then it is morbid to represent a young man rising above an early dis- 
appointment in love, and coming out from it stronger, less sensitive, 
more sinewed for action. 

" What has led certain critics to call the poem morbid is, of course, 
that the speaker's judgment of his age, in the earlier part, is colored 
by his private wrong and grief. But it is not morbid, on the contrary, 
it is perfectly natural and right that outrages on the affections should 
disturb the calmness of the judgment, that acts of treacherous weakness 
should excite indignation and scorn ; and the view of the world natural 
to this state of mind is quite as true as that current upon the Stock 
Exchange, and not at all more partial or prejudiced. It is not, indeed, 
the highest, any more than it is a complete view, but it is higher and 
truer than the 'all serene' contemplation of a comfortable Epicurean or 
passionless thinker. There is no cynicism in the 'fine curses' of Locks- 
ley Hall ; they are not the poisonous exhalations of a corrupted nature, 
but the thunder and lightning that clear the air of what is foul, the 
forces by which a loving and poetical mind, not yet calmed and 
strengthened by experience and general principles, repels unaccus- 
tomed outrage and wrong. With what a rich emotion he recalls his 
early recollections ! Sea, sandy shore, and sky have been for him a 
perpetual fountain of beauty and of joy, his youth a perpetual feast 
of imaginative knowledge and pictorial glory. With what a touch- 
ing air of tenderness and protection he watches the young girl whom 
he loves in secret, and whose paleness and thinness excite his pity 
as well as his hope ! How rapturously, when she avows her love, 
he soars up in his joy with a flight that would be tumultuous but for 
the swiftness of the motion, — unsteady but for the substantial mas- 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 183 

siveness of thought, and the grand poising sweep of the lyric power 
that sustains it ! Then how pathetic the sudden fall, the modulation 
by which he passes from the key of rapture to that of despair ! And 
here and there, through all that storm of anger, sarcasm, contempt, de- 
nunciation, that follows, there sounds a note of unutterable tenderness 
which gives to the whole movement a prevailing character of pain and 
anguish, of moral desolation, rather than of wrath and vengeance. Not 
till this mood exhausts itself, and the mind of the speaker turns to 
action as a resource against despair, does he realize all that he has lost. 
Not only is his love uprooted, — his hope, his faith in the world, have 
perished in that lightning flash ; and he turns again to his glorious 
youth, but now only to sound the gulf that separates him from it. The 
noble aspirations, the ardent hopes, the sanguine prophecies of earlier 
years roll in rich pomp of music and of picture before us ; but it is the 
cloud-pageantry of the boy's day-dream which breaks up to reveal the 
world as it appears now to the 'palsied heart ' and 'jaundiced eye' 
of the man. Yet in the midst of this distempered vision are seen 
glimpses of a deeper truth. The eternal law of progress is not broken 
because the individual man is shipwrecked. It is but a momentary 
glimpse, and offers no firm footing. His personal happiness, after all, 
is what concerns each person. Here, at least, in this convention-ridden, 
Mammon-worshipping Europe, where the passions are cramped, and 
action that would give scope to passionate energy impossible, the indi- 
vidual has no chance. But in some less advanced civilization, where 
the individual is freer if the race be less forward, there may be hope. 
And a picture of the tropics rises before the imagination, dashed off in 
a few strokes of marvellous breadth and richness of color. But the 
deeper nature of the man controls the delusion of the fancy ; his heart, 
reason, and conscience revolt against the escape into a mere savage 
freedom; they will not allow him to drop out of the van of the advanc- 
ing host; and manly courage comes with the great thought of a society 
that is rapidly fulfilling the idea of humanity; the personal unhappiness, 
the private wrong, the bitterness of outraged affection, give way before 
the upswelling sympathy with the triumph of the race to which he 
belongs. The passion has passed in the rush of words that gave it 
expression, and life shines clear again, no longer on the tender-hearted, 
imaginative boy, but on the man 



Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. " 



3. "'TIS the place, and all around it, etc. The reading of 1842 is: 
" 'T is the place, and round the gables," etc. 

4. Dreary gleams. The construction of gleams has been much dis- 
cussed. We have always regarded it as in apposition Avith czcrlews. 
The birds as they fly over the hall, seem like dreary gleams in the sky. 
Some have assumed that ciirletv's call is the subject oi gleajns ; and they 
compare Sophocles : eAa/*(re aprios (paveTaa (pd/na ; and Pindar : ^80^ 
irpeirei. 

5. Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks, etc. This is the original 



184 NOTES. 

reading, changed in the Selections of 1S65 to " Locksley Hall, that half 
in ruin overlooks," etc., but afterwards restored. 

8. Sloping. See on Palace of Art, 247 above. 

14. Closed. Enclosed, included. Cf. Princess, concl. 94 : 

" few words and pithy, such as closed 
Welcome, farewell," etc. 

Sec note in our ed. p. 187. 

31. Love took up the glass of Time, etc. Mr. Carr compares, but mis- 
quotes W. R. Spencer : 

" How noiseless falls the foot of Time 
That only treads on flowers ! 

And who with clear account remarks 

The ebbing of his glass. 
When all its sands are diamond sparks 

That dazzle as they pass ? " 

34. Smote the chord of self , etc. " This line concentrates into itself a 
large part of Tennyson's noble conce])tion of love, or conception of the 
nobleness of love. Love annihilates Self, even while exalting it, and 
crowns life in a two-fold ecstasy of renunciation and attainment. A life 
of unselfish, beneficent occupation — of synipathy in mental culture — 
of co-operation in benevolent effort — would have been the natural 
sequel. But Mammon and conventional respectability tore the strings 
from the harp of Life, and shattered the glass of Time with its golden 
sands " (Bayne). 

38. A}id our spirits, etc. Mr. Carr remarks that this looks like a 
reminiscence of Guarini's Pastor Fido, ii. 6 : 

" Ma i colpi di due labbra innamorate, 
Quando a ferir si va bocca con bocca, 

. . . ove I'un alma e I'altra 
Corre." 

47. As the husband is, etc. The same critic says that this recalls 
Scott's Abbot, chap. ii. : '' Know that the rank of the man rates that of 
the wife." 

63. Well — V;> well that I should blnster ! "Exception has been 
taken to the tone which the discarded lover assumes toward her who 
has forsaken him, as if its harshness were impossible for a generous 
and magnanimous nature, which Tennyson, without question, intends 
his lover to be. But I think this is to bring the air of Rosa Matilda 
romance over the world of reality. It would have been very pretty for 
the poet to represent his lover as breathing nothing but admiration and 
broken-hearted forgiveness. Schiller might perhaps have told the story 
so; but Goethe or Shakespeare would not. Heroes that are too angelic 
cease to be men. The high-flown magnanimity is the sign-manual of 
the false sublime. Tennyson makes it plain also that it is only what is 
degrading in Amy's life that the lover blames and hates. Beneath all 
his angry words, his love for her remains ineradicable, and he would 
wish her happy if he could do so and at the same time save her from 
his contempt " (Bayne). 



LOCKSLEY HALL. 1 85 

(&. Rookery. Flock of rooks, or the birds that belong to a rookery. 
Cf. Princess, concl. 97 : " The long line of the approaching rookery." 
72. Whom to look at was to love. Cf. Burns : 

" But to see her was to love her. 
Love but her, and love forever." 

76. T/iat a sorrow's crown, etc. This is from Dante, Inf. v. 121 : 

*' Nessun maggior dolore 
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
Nella miseria." 

121. Argosies. A name applied to the larger merchant ships of the 
olden time. Cf. Shakespeare, M. of V. \. i. 9 : " your argosies with 
portly sail," etc. 

129. Of most. That is, of the majority. 

130. Lapt. Enfolded. Cf. Princess, ii. 151 : 

"lapt 
In the arms of leisure." 
See our ed. p. 154. 

135. Slozuly comes, etc. " What a picture is this of Feudalism set- 
tling to its last sleep, with Freedom advancing upon it ! Or of aristoc- 
racies that nod and wink in the waning light of their heraldic honors, 
with the grand roar of the democracy beginning to be heard ! " (Bayne.) 
138. The process of the suns. The lapse of years. Cf. Shakespeare, 
Sonn. 104. 6: " In process of the seasons," etc. 
162. Swings. The early reading was, " droops." 

168. I will take some savage woi?ian, etc. Mr. Carr remarks that "the 
cynical aspiration finds a curious parallel " in Beaumont's Philaster, 
iv. 2 : 

" O that I had been nourish'd in the woods, 
. . . and not known 
The right of crowns, nor the dissembling trains 
Of women's looks. ... 
And then had taken me some mountain girl 
Beaten with winds, that might have strew'd my bed 
With leaves and reeds, and have borne at her big breasts 
My large coarse issue. This had been a life 
Free from vexation." 

180. Like Joshtia's moon. vSee Joshua, x. 12. 

iSi. Beacons. The verb is rare. 

182. The great world. The original reading is " the peoples " 

1S3. The globe. The early reading is "the world." 

184. Cycle. Used of course for an indefinitely long period, or an 
age. Cf. Two Voices, 17. Some criticaster has urged the objection 
that a Chinese "cycle "is less than fifty years (we forget the precise 
length); and somebody else takes the cycle to be the Platonic "great 
year." 

Cathay was the name given to China by the old travellers. Cataia 
was another form of it, whence Catalan, used as a term of contempt by 
Shakespeare {M. W. ii. i. 148, T. N. ii. 3. 80), Davenant, and other old 
writers. 

191. Holt. See on Talking Oak, 123. 



1 86 NOTES. 



THE TWO VOICES, 

First published in the edition of 1842 (where it is dated 1833), and 
unaltered except in line 457. 

Bayne remarks : " It is required of all poetry, without exception, that 
it be lovely and picture-like to the eye, and tuneful to the ear. These 
conditions cannot be relaxed in favor of metaphysical poetry. Since, 
therefore, metaphysical truth is truth in its most abstract form, it will 
clearly result that to produce in one and the same wcrk good meta- 
physics and delightful poetry is a matter of extreme difficulty. This 
difficulty Tennyson has signally vanquished in The Two Voices. It is 
a compact, closely-reasoned metaphysical essay on the worth of life and 
the hope of immortality, and yet I know no poem of Tennyson's more 
variegated in color, more piquantly and brilliantly picturesque, more 
truly though gravely melodious." 

Tainsh says : " The Tiuo J'oices is a philosophical poem of the strict- 
est kind. It is one sustained argument, or a series of arguments upon 
the same subject, from the beginning to almost the close. Yet it is full 
of luscious poetry. It would be difficult to find another poem in which 
a conception so purely intellectual is clothed with such richness of 
imagination and imagery. The argument is concerning suicide. To 
feel the full force of it, it is necessary to separate one's self, for the 
time, from all that Christianity has taught us concerning the duty of 
patient endurance and the absolute surrender of the human will to the 
divine, concerning the lovingness of God, and the * soul of good in 
things evil,' and to take up the position of, say, a high-souled Greek 
whose life was full enough of sadness and suffering to have become a 
burden to him. From such a situation the argument starts. The sin- 
fulness of suicide is out of the question — that is not showable except 
on Christian grounds. The question of the poem is whether on natural 
grounds suicide could be defended, or must be condemned." 

We add the analysis of the poem by the saime author : 

" Voice. You are so miserable, why not die ? 

Ma7i. This being of mine is too wonderful to be wantonly destroyed. 

Voice. A dragon-fly is more wonderful than you. 

Man. Not so. The pre-eminence of man lies in his intellectual and moral nature. 

Voice. You are proud. Let me grant that you are higher than the fly and some 
other beings. Think you there are not many other beings in the universe higher than 
you? * 

{resumes.) Moreover, you are but one of many. There would be plenty of men like 
you left. 

Man. No two beings are altogether alike. 

Voice. Even so, among millions of shades of difference, will your particular shade 
be missed ? 

Man. You cannot know. 

" This is the end of the first argument. It might seem weak on the 
side of the man, but it is not so. The strength of the temptation de- 
pends upon the truth of those things insinuated by the Voice. The 
proof of the truth is challenged, and is not produced. It is enough. 
Even a doubt upon this point would forbid suicide to a noble mind. A 
new argument commences : — 



THE TWO VOICES. 1 87 

Voice. You are so miserable and so impotent, 'twere better to die, 

Ma7i. Matters may mend. If I die, I lose that chance. 

Voice. What are the means of cure? 

jl/a« (not answering directly). If I should die, I should leave beautiful nature, and 
the knowledge of human progress. These would continue,' while I was absent and 
ignorant. 

Voice. But this must happen some day, in any case. 

Man. Human progress is unceasing. If I bide my time, I see some of it. 

Voice. The progress of man is so slow, so slight, compared with the infinite distance 
of tlie goal, that thousands of years would not suffice to show you any appreciable ad- 
vance. How much less will some thirty years avail! Moreover, j/c?^ cannot watch and 
see even this fancied progress for want of healtli of body and calm of mind. 

Man (again changing the argument). Men will call me a coward if I die rather 
than wait and suffer. 

Voice. Much more a coward are you, then, to live ; for so you are twice a coward : 
you fear the pain of life, yet dare not escape, because you fear the scorn of men. 
Moreover, does love so bind you to men tliat you need care for their scorn ? Will it 
disturb your rest? In truth, they will not scorn you ; they will forget you. 

Man. That men will forget me is small inducement to put myself out of their sight. 
Rather it provokes me to live and recall the hope I once had of compelling them to 
remember me by useful and noble deeds done on their behalf. 

Voice. Such dreams are common to youth. They pass as age advances. They are 
not worth preserving. Man cannot really do anything worth donig, or know anythmg 
worth knowing. The end of life is disappointment. Death is the remedy. 

Maji. That men cati do and know is certain ; for men have done and known. 

Voice. Perhaps ; or they thought so. Some men have happy temperaments : from 
such come happy phantasies. 

Man (changing the argument once more). This life is bad. Should I seek death 
as I am, the next, so entered, may be worse — its suffering deeper and more fixed. 

Voice. Ponder the dead man, and tell me do you find evidence of any new hfe to 
fear? 

Man. You cannot prove the dead are dead. It is true that the outward signs imply 
it. Why then do we not hold these signs conclusive? The fact that thus, against all 
outer reasons, we doubt, is evidence for the new life. The heart of man forebodes a 
mystery. He has conceived an eternity. He conceives, too, the ideal, which here he 
nowhere finds. He sees, dimly, a Divine Father and a Purpose working through the 
universe. He feels in himself a higher nature struggling with his lower being. These 
doubts and questionings must have answers somewhere. You cannot answer them. 
Counter doubts will not do it, for the first doubts would still remain. Thus by doubts 
you have as.sailed me, and by doubts you are foiled. 

Voice (after a pause in the argument). You had a beginning; you sprung from 
nothing. Why should you not have an end, and pass to nothing? 

Maft. You do not show that to begin necessarily implies to end. But suppose I 
grant it, I do not know that at birth I began to be. Each being may have many phases 
of life. I do not remember my last stage of being — the change of state may involve 
forgetfulness. Moreover, 

As here we find in trances, men 
Forget the thing that happens, then 
Until they fall in trance again ; 

so, should my next state of being be like my last, I may then remember that last, though 
forgetting it in this. Or I may have fallen from a higher state of being, and the yearn- 
ings after the noble and the beautiful which flit through my mind may be traces of that 
higher life. Or I may have risen through and from lower forms, and then I might well 
have forgotten, for even here we forget the days of early immaturity. Or I may have 
existed as an unbodied essence, and then I must needs be incapable of memory; 

For Memory, dealing but with Time, 
And he with matter, should she climb 
Beyond her own material prime ? 

Moreover, there do haunt me what seem like reminiscences of a past life, as if what 
now seems new were not really new, but had been seen or done before. 



1 88 NOTES. 

Voice. The still voice laiigh'd. ' I talk,' said he, 

' Not with thy dreams ! Suffice it thee 
Thy pain is a reality.' 

Man. Yes, but you have missed your mark, and have not tricked me into death by 
one-sided falsehoods. No living being ever truly longed for death. It is more life that 
we want, not death. 

" The battle is over, and the man has won the victory upon the ground 
chosen by the tempting voice. By the pleas common to all worthy 
humanity, suicide is irrational, weak, contemptible. The man is victo- 
rious, but not the less is he desolate ; 

I ceased and sat as one forlorn. 

But then comes the second voice whispering Christian hopes ; and the 
sight of human love and worship, and the happy glory of nature, bring 
light and comfort to the desolate heart that, without light and comfort, 
had battled for the right." 

7. To-day I saw the dragon-fly, etc. We are inclined to agree with 
Tainsh (see p. 186 above) in his interpretation of this reply of the 
Voice ; and Mr, J. F. Genung (whose analysis of In Meinoriam is the 
best we have) writes us that he has always explained the passage in 
the same way. Bayne understands the Voice to mean " that the shuf- 
fling off of this mortal coil may open to him new spheres of energy and 
happiness;" and that "the reply of the poet is that man is nature's 
highest product — the obvious suggestion being that there is no splendid 
dragon-fly into which the human grub, released by death, is likely to 
develop." But this "suggestion." so far from being "obvious," seems 
to us merely a desperate attempt to make the reference to the higher 
nature of man a " reply " to what the critic assumes that the Voice 
means to say. Corson, however, adopts this explanation. 

33. The kind. That is, human kind ; as the reply assumes. 

34. Response. Accented on the first syllable. Cf. the throwing back 
of the accent in certain words by Shakespeare ; as relapse in Hen. V. 
iv. 3. 107 : " Killing in relapse of mortality," etc. 

39. For thy deficiency. At the loss of thee, or ihy peculiar difference. 

51. Bnt thou wilt weep. That is, without weeping. The Voice "tries 
a new tack, and argues that the poet's wretchedness makes him unfit 
for anything but complaining " (Bayne). 

53. If I make dark. CI. Job, yiw .20. 

59. The thor7i. The hawthorn. See on The Miller's Daughter, 
130 above. 

71. The fiirzy prickle. The prickly furze, or gorse. 

74. Is various to present. Differs from its ]Dredecessors in present- 
ing. This " indefinite use of the infinitive" (Abbott, Shakes. Gr. § 356) 
is common in Elizabethan English. 

77. Ruined toiuer. " His own shattered selfhood from which he 
would take his outlook upon the world" (Corson). 

85. Froju his cold crowji, etc. From the snow-clad summit overhead. 

103. This is mo7-e vile, etc. " The Voice sees its advantage, and 
attacks him sharply" (Bayne). 

120. Fride. In the same construction as resolve. 



THE TWO VOICES. 1 89 

125. Among the tents, ^tz. No doubt Corson is right in seeing here 
an allusion to the poet's university life. 

170. The riddle of the earth, Cf. Palace of Art, 213 above. 

173. I told thee. See 88-93 above. The Voice "recurs to the pre- 
viously urged plea that man cannot read the riddle of the earth or 
grasp any truth related to the mind " (Bayne). 

187. Sotnetimes a little corner, etc. The stanza bears a marked re- 
semblance to a passage in The Vale of Bones, a piece in the Poems by 
Tmo Brothers, published in 1827 : 

" At times her partial splendor shines 
Upon the grove of deep black pines." 

Another passage in the same poem is like one in Oriana (published in 
1830), so that we can have no doubt which of the "Two Brothers" 
wrote it. 

195. Ixion-like. Like Ixion, embracing a cloud when he thought to 
clasp a goddess in his arms. 

198. A little lower, etc. See Ps. viii. 5. 

204. To flatter me, etc. To delude me into suicide. 

205. / know that age to age, etc. " He refers to the noble lives that 
have been lived, and maintains that, though the atmosphere of the 
world is darkened with dust of systems and of creeds, some have 
achieved calm, and known 'the joy that mixes man with heaven.' Here 
occurs that picture of the martyr Stephen which is in Tennyson's lof- 
tiest manner" (Bayne). 

219. Like Stephen. In a poem <9« the Death of my Grandmother in 
the volume mentioned in the note on 187 above, these lines occur : 

" Her faith, like Stephen's, soften'd her distress ; 
Scarce less her anguish, scarce her patience less." 

228. The elements, etc. Cf. Shakespeare, J. C. v. 5. 73 : 

" His life was gentle, and the elements 

So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, ' This was a man ! ' " 

and Drayton, Baron'' s Wars, ed. 1619 : 

" He was a man (then boldly dare to say) 
In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit, 
In whom so mixt the elements did lay 
That none to one could sovereignty impute ; 
As all did govern, so did all obey : 
He of a temper was so absolute, 
As that it seem'd, when Nature him began, 
She meant to show all that might be in man." 

See our ed. of 7. C. p. 185. 

229. J said, I toil beneath the curse, etc. " The poet now suggests that, 
if he goes hence in quest of truth, he may merely exchange one riddle for 
a hundred, and that his anguish, ' unmanacled from bonds of sense,' 
may become permanent. On this, the Voice, reversing its original 

favor of suicide, namely, that it might be the door to a 



190 NOTES. 

life of more splendid activity, tempts him with the prospect of eternal 
rest in death. Such inconsistency in argument is admirably in keeping 
with the character of a tempter " (Bayne). 

Tainsh makes this "inconsistency in argument" a point against the 
explanation of S-15 above which Bayne gives; but we think that the 
latter is right in regarding it as natural enough in a sophistical reasoner 
like the Voice. 

256. His sous grow up, etc. Mr. Carr compares Job, xiv. 20, 21. 

264. The place he kuew, etc. Cf. Joby\\\. 10, 

277. The simple senses, etc. To the senses the victory of Death seems 
complete and final. 

280. By these. That is, by the senses. 

283. Forged. Shaped, formed ; as in Shakespeare, A. W. i. i. 85: 
"The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts," etc. 

Bayne remarks : " Here the poet has opened fire from his main bat- 
tery. This is one of the grand arguments on which the advocate of 
immortality takes his stand. It is an argument pre-eminently accordant 
with modern science and modern philosojihy, for no one can urge it 
with clearer logic than the evolutionist. Why is it proper for the bird 
to flv, and for the reptile to crawl .'' Because, says the evolutionist, 
the bird has developed wings. In like manner, the human creature 
has developed a faith in immortality, or, to put it at the lowest, a 
hope of immortality. Here and there a few persons, by elaborately 
educating themselves in the gospel of death, have quenched their hope 
of life beyond the grave; but that, throughout all the millions of civ- 
ilized and semi-civilized humanity, this hope has been evolved, is just 
as sure as that a bird has wings. And.it adds greatly to the impres- 
siveness of this hope that it has been evolved, as Tennyson specially, 
urges, in clear antagonism to the main current of evidence that sense 
can produce upon the subject." 

286. He ozvus the fatal gift, etc. " He has the gift of inward spiritual 
eyes, which gift is 'fatal ' to the verdict of the simi)le senses in regard 
to Death" (Corson). 

287. That read, etc. That recognize his spirit as having "intima- 
tions of immortality" — seeing, though only as in a glass darkly, its 
heritage of life beyond the grave. 

292. That type of Pejfect, etc. "This is simply true, and it would be 
hard to name a truth of more importance. In the entire universe, as 
revealed to man by his senses, there is nothing perfect ; and the cen- 
tral impulse in all man's noblest striving is derived from the aspiration 
of his spirit toward a perfect truth, a perfect beauty, a perfect happi- 
ness, which are exemplified nowhere in the world " (Bayne). 

308. His dark 7uisdotn. Cf. the blindly wise in 287 above. 

342. That I first zuas, eic. That the beginning of my existence was, 
etc. 

350, Some draught of Lethe, etc. Cf. Virgil, j^n. vi. 748: 

" Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos 
Lethaeum ad fluvium deus evocat agmine magno ; 
Scilicet immemores supera ut convexa revisant 
Rursus, et incipiant in corpora yelle revert)." 



ST. AGNES' EVE. 191 

See also Milton, P. L. ii. 582 : 

"Far off from these a slow and silent stream, 
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 
Her watery labyrinth ; whereof who drinks 
Forthwith his former state and being forgets, 
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain." 

371. Unconfined. Released, set free. 

374. Naked essence. Spirit without a body. 

379. Moreover, something is or seems, etc. As Mr. Carr remarks, 
these lines find an appropriate commentary in Wordsworth's Ode on 
the Intiynations of Immortality. 

389. My mortal ark. Corson quotes In Mem. 12 : 

" I leave this mortal ark behind, 
A weight of nerves without a mind." 

401. In quiet scorn. Having no faith in the Sabbath as a symbol of 
heavenly rest. 

406. Soften' d airs. The first mild winds of spring. 

407. Uncongeal. " Note how much more significant this negative 
form is, in this place, than the positive form thaw would be " (Corson). 

410. Passing the place, etc. The graveyard, which in England — 
at least, in rural England — is always the churchyard, surrounding the 
house of God. 

445. Tofeel,^ etc. " The essence of the poem comes out here. All 
has been drifting to this central idea, namely, that the power io feel (not 
the power to thiitk) is the safeguard of faith and hope and spiritual 
health" (Corson). 

453. Vote scarce could see, etc. An English critic quotes George 
Peele, Araynment of Paris : 

"And rounde about the valley as ye passe, 
Ye may ne see, for peeping floures, the grasse." 

457. And all, etc. The reading down to 1884 was " So variously 
seem'd all things wrought " 

461. Commune. Accented on the first syllable; as in Shakespeare, 
Hamlet, iv. 5. 202 : " Laertes, I must commune with your grief," etc. 



ST. AGNES' EVE. 

This poem first appeared in The Keepsake for 1837, and was slightly 
altered when reprinted in 1842. The title was changed from " St. Agnes " 
to " St. Agnes' Eve " in the edition of 1855. 

16. Argent round. The moon. Cf. Dream of Fair Women, 158 
above. 

21. Break up. Break open; as in 2 Kings xxv. 4, Matt. xxiv. 43, etc. 
Cf. also Shakespeare, i Hen VI. i. 3. 13 : " Break up the gates," etc. 



192 NOTES. 



SIR GALAHAD. 

First printed in 1842, and unaltered. 

" Sir Galahad is a noble picture of a religious knight. He is almost 
as much a mystic as a soldier ; both a monk and a warrior of the ideal 
type. He foregoes the world as much as if he lived within the monas- 
tery walls, and esteems his sword as sacred to the service of God as 
if it were a cross. His rapture is altogether that of the mystic. He is 
almost a St. Agnes, exchanging only the rapture of passivity for the 
transport of exultant effort. . . . He is just the eml^odiment of the 
noblest and the strongest tendencies of the chivalric age " (Tainsh). 

5. Shattering. A peculiar but expressive use of the word. For shrill- 
eth, cf. Princess, v. 241 :. " merrily-blowing shrill'd the martial fife," etc. 
See also Talking Oak, 68 above. 

14. On who?n. That is, on those on whom; an ellipsis common in 
Elizabethan English. Cf. Shakespeare, AI. for ill. ii. 2. 119: "Most 
ignorant of what he 's most assur'd ; " A', of L. 497 : " And dotes on 
what he looks, 'gainst law or duty," etc. 

42. The Holy Grail. This was the holy vessel from which our Saviour 
ate the paschal lamb at the Last Supper, or, as some said, out of which 
he dispensed the wine. It was said to have been brought to Britain by 
Joseph of Arimathea. See Spenser, F. Q. ii. 10. 53 : 

" Hither came Joseph of Arimathy, 
Who brought with him the holy grayle, they say." 

When approached by any one not perfectly pure, it vanished from 
sight. Having been lost, it became the object of quest for knights- 
errant of all nations, and the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the 
Round Table were founded upon this legend of the search for it. Sir 
Galahad was at last successful in finding it. 



THE BROOK. 



This charming idyl was first published with Maud in 1855. 

The brook of the poem is probably the one near Tennyson's birthplace 
in Somersby, Lincolnshire — the same which he describes in the Ode 
to Memory, one of his earliest poems, published in 1830 : 

"Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside, 
The seven elms, the poplars four, 
That stand beside my father's door, 
And chiefly from the brook that loves 
To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, 
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, 
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, 
In every elbow and turn 
The filtered tribute of the rough woodland, 
O, hither lead thy feet ! " 



THE BROOK. 193 

4. Scrip. Certificates of stock. 

6. How money breeds. Cf. Shakespeare, M. of V. i. 3. 95 : 

" Afiionio. Was this inserted to make interest good? 
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? 

Shylock. I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast." 

See also Bacon, Essay 011 Usury : " That it is against nature for 
money to beget money." 

16. Branding. Burning, torrid. 

17. Neilgherry air. The cool and salubrious Neilgherry Hills in 
India are the favorite summer resort of the British residents. 

21. O babbling brook, etc. It has been suggested that the idea of this 
song of the brook was taken from a German lyric, Das Bdchlein: 

" Du Bachlein, silberhell und klar, 
Du eilst voriiber immerdar. 

Wo kommst du her ? Wo gehst du hin ? 
* Ich komm' aus dunkler Felsen Schoss, 
Mein Lauf geht iiber Blum' und Moss.' " 

54. Grigs. Crickets ; aptly described as high-elbowed. According to 
Nares, the proverb, "as merry as a grig," is a corruption of "as merry 
as a Gi'eek" which was an echo of the Roman proverbial reference to 
the fondness of the Greeks for good living and free potations. 

70. Lissome. Lithe, lithesome ; as in Merlin and Vivien : " her lis- 
some limbs," etc. 

80. Makes a hoary eyebrow. That is, by its arch. 

118. Meadow-sweet. A common English plant, also called meadow- 
wort, the Spircea tilmaria of the botanists. 

130. Shuddering. Most aptly descriptive; as twinkled is in 135 
just below. 

138. A long, long-winded tale. The abstract of it which follows is 
full of humor. 

176. The netted stmbeam. Another epithet that shows the poet's 
keen observation of little things in nature which few have eyes to 
see. 

189. The dome, etc. The Duomo, or Cathedral of Florence, whose 
dome is the masterpiece of Brunelleschi. 

194. By the long wash, etc. The poet is said to have specially prided 
himself on the sustained rhythmical quality of this line, as well he 
might. Bayard Taylor, however, thought it surpassed by Bryant's in 
The Sea : 

"The long wave rolling from the Southern Pole 
To break upon Japan." 

203. Briony. See on The Talking Oak, 148. 

13 



194 NOTES. 



ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

This poem, originally published on the day of the Duke's funeral in 
1852, was probably written in some haste. It underwent considerable 
revision before it was reprinted in 1853, ^"<^ ^^s further retouched 
before it appeared with Maud in 1855. We give all the variations of 
the present text from the ist ed. 

Shepherd, in his chapter on " Tennyson's versification," remarks : " In 
the Ode on the Death of the Diike of Wellington, he has soared to lyric 
heights to which, perhaps, even Pindar never attained. The tolling of 
the bell, the solemn and slow funeral march, the quick rush of battle, 
and the choral chant of the cathedral all succeed one another, and the 
verse sinks and swells, rises and falls to every alternation with equal 
power." 

I. Bury. The ist ed. has " Let us bury; " as in 3 below. 

5. Mourning, etc. The ist ed. reads : 

" When laurel-garlanded leaders fall. 
And warriors carry," etc. 

8. Where shall we lay, etc. After this line the ed. of 1853 has the fol- 
lowing line, since suppressed : " He died on Walmer's lonely shore." 
The next line begins " But here," etc. 

The reading of the ist ed. was this: 

"Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? 
Let the sound of those he wrought for," etc. 

20. Remembering, &\.c. The ist ed. reads: "Our sorrow drav/s but 
on the golden Past ; " and it does not contain the next two lines. 

28. Clearest of. The ist ed. has "freest from." 

42. World-victor'' s victor. The conqueror of Napoleon. 

49. The cross of gold. On St. Paul's Cathedral, in the crypt of which 
the Duke is buried. 

59. KiiolVd. This line is not in the ist ed. Cf. Macbeth, v 8. 50 : 
"And so his knell is knoll'd." 

74. A man of well-attemper'' d frame. Cf. the quotation ixoxwj. C- in 
note on Two Voices, 228 above. 

79. Ever-echoing. The reading down to 1873 ^^^ "ever-ringing." 

80-82. Who is he, etc. The question is asked by the mighty seaman, 
Nelson, who is also buried in St. Paul's. 

91. His foes were thine, Q\.c. The 1st ed. reads: "His martial wis- 
dom kept us free ; " and the following lines are : 

" O warrior-seaman, this is he. 
This is England's greatest son. 
Worthy of our gorgeous rites, 
And worthy to be laid by thee; 
He that gain'd a hundred fights, 
And never lost an English gun ; 
He that in his earlier day 
Against the myriads of Assaye 



ODE TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 195 

Clash' d with his fiery few and won : 
And underneath another sun 
Made the soldier, led him on, 
And ever great and greater grew, 
Beating from the wasted vines 
All their marshals' bandit swarms 
Back to France with countless blows ; 
Till their host of eagles flew 
Past the Pyrenean pines, 
FoUow'd up," etc. 

99. Assaye. A small town in Hindostan, memorable as the place 
where Wellington (then General Wellesley) began his career of victory, 
Sept. 23, 1803, by defeating an army of thirty thousand with a force of 
less than five thousand. 

loi. Underneath another stm. In Spain. The allusions to the famous 
campaign there need no comment. 

118. Such a war, etc. After this line the 1st ed. has " He withdrew 
to brief repose ; " and then goes on with 119 as in the text. 

123 That loud Sabbath. The day of Waterloo. 

151. A people yet. Cf. Princess, concl. 52 : 

"our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet," etc. 

154, 155. Thank him, etc. This couplet is not in the ist ed. 

157. 0/ boundless love ajtd reverence. The ist ed. has "Of most un- 
bounded reverence," etc. It does not contain line 159. 

166. For saving that, ye help to save mankind. The ist ed. reads: 
" For saving that, ye save mankind ; " in 16S : " And help the march of 
human mind ; " and in 169 : " Till crowds be sane and crowns be 
just." 

170. But wink no more, etc. After this line the ist ed. has the fol- 
lowing, omitted in all subsequent eds. : 

" Perchance our greatness will increase ; 
Perchance a darkening future yields 
Some reverse from worse to worse, 
The blood of men in quiet fields. 
And sprinkled on the sheaves of peace." 



It goes on thus 



And O remember him who led your hosts ; 
Respect his sacred warning ; guard your coasts : 
His voice is silent," etc. 



181-185. Who let . . . a foe. These five lines are not in the ist ed., 
which goes on with " His eighty winters," etc. 

i95~-i7- He on whom . . . and sun. This fine passage is unaltered 
from the ist ed. On the last line, cf. Rro. xxi. 23. 

218. Such was he, etc. The ist ed. reads : 

"He has not fail'd ; he hath prevail' d : 

So let the men whose hearths he saved from shame 
Thro' many and many an age proclaim 
At civic revel," etc 



19^ NOTES. 

241. Ours the pain, etc. The line is not in the ist ed. 

251. We revere, etc. The ist ed. reads thus: 

" For solemn, too, this day are we. 
O friends, we doubt not that for one so true 
There must be other nobler work to do 
Than when he fought at Waterloo, 
And Victor he must ever be. 
Though worlds on worlds in myriad myriads roll 
Round us," etc. 

252. The tides, etc. The music at the funeral service in the cathedral. 
266-270. On God . . . dust to dust. These lines are not in the ist ed. 
271. He is gone. The 1st ed. has "The man is gone; " and in 278, 

" But speak no more," etc. 



INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES 
EXPLAINED. 



Abominable, the, i6o. 

adown, 152, 167. 

a many, 157- 

anadems, 164. 

anight, 152. 

argent -lidded, 153. 

argent round, igi. 

argosies, 185. 

ark, mortal, 191. 

arras, 162. 

Assaye, 195. 

Ausonian king, the, 163. 

averse {^= turned away), 170. 

Avilion, 177. 

babe in arm, 163. 
baldric, 154. 
beacons (verb), 185. 
between the sun and moon, 

167. 
bluff Harry, 178. 
boscage, 173. 
brake (= broke), 159. 
branding (=r torrid), 193. 
bravely {= admirably), 153. 
break up (=: break open), 

191. 
briony, 179, 193. 
bulbul, 152. 

Calpe, 153. 

Cama, 163. 

Camelot, 154, 175. 

Canopus, 173. 

captain of my dreams, the, 

174. 
Cassandra, 160. 
Cathay, 185. 
Caucasus, 153. 
cedarn, 153. 
cheerly, 154. 
circumstance, 165. 
closed (= enclosed), 184. 
commune (accent), 191. 
counterchanged, 153. 
coverture, 152. 



cuisses, 177. 
cycle, 185. 

Dan Chaucer, 169. 
delight of battle, 180. 
delivering (= announcing), 

159- 
diapered, 153. 
dome of Brunelleschi, 193. 
downward smoke, 165. 
dreary gleams, 183. 
drove (=r drove over), 152. 
dully (adjective), 165. 
dusk and shiver, 154. 

elements (mixed), 189. 
engrailed, 163. 
engrained, 152. 
essence, naked, 191. 

fatal gift of eyes, 190. 

first of those who know, the, 

164. 
for (^ because), 176. 
forged (= shaped), 190. 
forlorn of, 158. 
fragment (:= rock), 158. 
fretted, 165. 
Fulvia, 174. 
furzy prickle, 188. 

galingale, 167. 
Ganymede, 164. 
glance and poise (of min- 
nows), 155. 
gleams, dreary, 183. 
great water, a, 175. 
grigs, 193. 

heavy-plunging, 172. 
Hesperian gold, 159. 
best, 175. 

high-elbowed §rigs, 193. 
hoary to the wind, 163. 
holt, 178, 185. 
Holy Grail, the, 192. 



hooves, 154. 
Hyades, the, 180. 

Ixion like, 189. 

knolled, 194. 

lapt, 185. 
leaguered, 170. 
Lethe, 190. 
levels, shining, 175. 
lief (= loved), 176. 
lissome, 193. 
Lizard-point, 179. 
Lotophagi, 166. 
loud Sabbath, 195. 
lucid, 160. 
lush, 170. 

makes a hoary eyebrow, 193. 
man-minded offset, 178. 
marge, 152, 175. 
married brows, 159- 
may (noun), 157. 
meadow-sweet, 193. 
Memnon, 164. 
mild - minded melancholy, 

168. 
moly, 168. 
mooned, 153. 
mortal ark, 191. 

naked essence, 191. 
Neilgherry air, 193. 
netted sunbeam, 193. 
nightingale (gender), 164. 
northern morn, 176. 
northern morning, 179. 

o'erthwarted, 159. 
onward-sloping, 165. 
oxlip, 178. 

platans, 152. 
pleasance, 153. 
plunging seas, 165. 



198 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES EXPLAINED. 



process of the suns, 185. 

response (accent), 188. 

rillets, 152. 

rivage, 152. 

rookery (=: flock of rooks), 

185- 
Rosamond the Fair, 173. 
rosaries (=: rose-gardens), 

153- 

Sabbath, loud, 195. 
samite, 175. 
scornful crags, 163. 
scrip, 193. 

sequel of guerdon, 159. 
shattering (trumpet), 192. 
sheeny, 152. 
she-slips, 178. 



shining levels, 175. 
shivered to the tingling 

stars, 176. 
shook (:= scintillated), 170. 
shuddering (puppies), 193. 
silken sail, 152. 
silvers (noun), 153. 
Simois, 159. 
slope, 165, 184. 
stilly sound, 153. 
strikes along, 170. 
sunlights, 160 

teacup times, etc., 178. 
that (=: so that), 177. 
Thessalian growth, 179. 
thorn (= hawthorn), 188. 
thridding, 173. 



tiars, 152. 

tortoise {■=. teshtdo), 170. 
traced (of tracery), 162. 
twinkled, 193. 

uncongeal, 191. 
undazzled (verb), 173. 
Uther's son, 163. 

various to present, 188. 
verge (^ horizon), 162. 
Verulam, 164. 

wandering fields, 167. 
water, a great, 175. 
white-hooved, 159. 
with (= by), 167. 
world-victor's victor, 194. 
worm (=: snake), 173. 



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